Is Google devaluing Guest Posts from sites with "Write for Us" footers?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been doing a lot of manual outreach lately and noticed an interesting trend. Links from sites that don’t explicitly advertise 'Guest Posts' or have a 'Write for Us' page in their footer seem to pass significantly more link equity than those that do.

It feels like Google's latest updates are getting better at identifying 'link farms' simply by footprints. If a site is covering everything from Crypto to Gardening and has a public price list, the power of that backlink seems to drop over time.

In my recent projects, I’ve shifted 70% of my budget toward sites that require a personalized pitch to the editor rather than a standard admin deal.

What is your current strategy for 2026? Are you still using high-volume guest post sites, or have you moved to strictly niche-relevant outreach?

Yeah, Google doesn’t penalize Write for Us pages directly links still work if the site is relevant and not spammy.

Yes, Google has been actively devaluing guest
posts for several years

write 4 us in the footer is basically a giant please deindex me sign for spambrain lol . op is 100% right .
google's algo uses simple html extraction to find these footprints . if a site has a guest post page , it goes into a lower tier bucket immediately .
but the real issue isnt just the footer text , its the outbound link topology .
sites that advertise guest posts usually link to everything - crypto , roofing , cbd , essay writing . this destroys the site's topical vector . google sees it links to 50 unrelated niches and classifies it as a link farm instead of an authority .
in 2026 the only links that pass real weight are from sites that dont want to link to u . u have to do cold email outreach to real businesses / blogs that have zero write 4 us pages . 1 of those is worth 100 farm links .