I bought a bunch of backlinks from Fiverr when I didn’t really know what I was doing. Now I’m wondering if Google is holding this against my site. How can I know if my site is being punished? And if it is, how long does this last before things get better?
If Google punished sites for bad backlinks, people could just spam bad links to hurt competitors. Google mostly ignores the bad ones, but they won’t help your site either.
Best thing to do is block or disallow those spammy links from affecting your site.
Check your backlinks, and use the disavow tool to remove the spammy ones. That should clear it up.