PBN, or Private Blog Network, is a term that describes a collection of websites controlled by the same person or organization, whose primary and often sole purpose is to manipulate the search results of another, targeted (so-called “money site”) website. It is a Black-Hat SEO technique that relies on artificially creating a network of inbound links (backlinks) to increase the link weight and authority of the targeted site.
Conceptually, PBNs are built using expired domains that already have existing, nostalgic authority and inbound links from the past. The network owners maintain these domains with minimal, often low-quality or automated content, just so they can controllably place strong dofollow links to their main site. This creates an artificial link profile that mimics natural recommendations from multiple independent sources.
PBNs are a direct violation of the Webmaster Guidelines of Google and other search engines. Therefore, their use carries an extremely high risk of algorithmic or manual penalty. While they may provide quick rankings in the short term, in the long term they are an unsustainable and dangerous strategy that can lead to the target site being completely removed from the index. Expert SEO requires building organic and natural link profiles.