What is Google stacking?
Google stacking (sometimes called a Google entity stack) is the practice of creating a cluster of pages on Google's own free services, Google Sites, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive folders, My Maps, Business Profile posts and so on, filling each with content about a brand, linking them to each other and finally linking them all to the website you want to rank. The theory is that Google trusts its own domains, so links from them must carry weight, and that a dense web of consistent mentions helps Google recognize the brand as an entity.
It sits in grey hat territory. Nothing about creating a Google Doc is against the rules, but creating forty of them purely to manufacture links is exactly the kind of scheme Google's spam policies describe.
Why it matters
Why Google stacking matters
It matters mostly as a thing to recognize, because it is sold aggressively, often to local businesses and small brands, as a cheap shortcut to authority. The results it promises rarely arrive. Links from Google's shared properties are nofollow or otherwise discounted, a Google Doc has no authority of its own simply because it sits on google.com, and Google is very good at recognizing patterns of pages that exist only to link elsewhere.
Where it has an effect, it is usually on very low-competition local terms, and the same effort spent on a proper Business Profile, a few genuine local citations and one good piece of press would do more and last longer.
In practice
How Google stacking works in practice
- 01
A typical stack starts with a Google Site that mirrors the brand's About page, a folder of public Docs and Slides restating the services, a My Map pinned to the business address, and a set of Business Profile posts. Everything carries the same name, address and phone details, everything links to everything else, and everything links to the money site. Vendors then point a few outside links at the stack, in the belief that authority flows through it to the target.
- 02
If a brand already has these assets for legitimate reasons, there is no harm in making sure they are complete, consistent and linked back to the site. The line is intent: a public Slides deck that a sales team actually uses is an asset; thirty near-identical Docs created on a Tuesday are a link scheme, and they look like one.
Watch out
What people get wrong about Google stacking
Believing that a google.com address confers trust. Google's ranking systems treat user-generated content on its own platforms the way they treat it anywhere else, with skepticism. The other mistake is thinking the risk is zero because the pages are not on your domain. A pattern of manufactured links pointing at a site is a signal about the site, and when Google's systems discount or act on it, the stack is not what suffers. The third mistake is paying for it on a monthly basis, as if a stack needed maintaining. If a vendor is charging a retainer to keep a pile of Docs alive, the retainer is the product.
