Spammy backlinks hurt you?

[Daniel7rusu]

I understand and believe the argument against building bad links cant hurt your ranking - if they could your competitors would build you thousands of spammy links. However, I have a few niche sites from the past that I had built links to from sites filled with spam, and I cant get them to rank higher than the 3rd page.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

[Stephen Root]

Yes they can when your site is brand new. Google denies this but I have done tests myself to prove this to be true. You really don't want anybody to do Xrumer blast to your 1 week old domain

But when your site is older then it can handle low quality links.

[anthonyaldrichkgaot]

Spamming links are very effective! Don't trust "ethical" web masters who say that it is not. Spam if the cheapest but still effective promotion way.

[Daniel7rusu]

Originally Posted by anthonyaldrichkgaot

Spamming links are very effective! Don't trust "ethical" web masters who say that it is not. Spam if the cheapest but still effective promotion way.

Not sure if this is a sarcastic answer? haha

[Billy Rey]

Originally Posted by Daniel7rusu

Not sure if this is a sarcastic answer? haha

I think he meant it. hehe

[paulgl]

People confuse spamming with useless.

If you "spam" links, chances are the ones you get are
entirely useless.

If one was able to spam useful links, then that would be something.

The "spamming" has no effect. And useless links would have no effect.

There is a difference between useless and hurting. Many people take
it to mean the same and it's not.

If it were only that easy....

I'll go out and spam my competitors links. Yeah, that'll show 'em!

Paul

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Stephen Root

Yes they can when your site is brand new. Google denies this but I have done tests myself to prove this to be true. You really don't want anybody to do Xrumer blast to your 1 week old domain

But when your site is older then it can handle low quality links.

Stephen we argued on what I considered a bad post before so its only fair to comment on this one.

Great post! the argument that you can't hurt a competitor with bad links is not as airtight as people make it out to be. Your competitor already has links that Google ranked them for. This gives them link variety.

Google couldn't care less about new domains.

[paulgl]

Well I wish people would really know what good backlinks are.

You don't need to spam them. You don't need a boatload.

If you were able to get 1,000 top notch backlinks by spamming,
then it probably wouldn't be considered spam. It would be
called a good technique. If you get 1,000 useless backlinks by
spamming, then we call it indeed spam.

I don't remember us arguing. Disagreeing on some fine points, but
no real arguments. I do more tongue in cheek stuff than what I
should. It's just I get tired of the same topics popping up over
and over. But, it does allow us to pump up those posts, right?

And I guess we are just using the term spam in different ways now.

I'm tired of the people posting lists of forums to be spammed with profiles.
I own a forum and delete and ban these idiots daily. It's not fair
to forum owners to put these lists out. These people join for no reason
other than posting a profile.

Paul

[kajanova]

Actually, I think they can. I think one of my websites was spam attacked or something because I went from months of being on the first page of google to all of a sudden on page 15-20. After a few weeks of obtaining quality back links I've recovered.. but I'm pretty sure a competitor tried to kill my rankings because it's a rare niche and few competitors to deal with. So with so few competitors it is easy to find and target them. I dunno, I could be wrong. But that is the only thing I could think of to explain it because I don't spam, use black hat techniques or nothing; totally legit.

[paulgl]

Google has said over and over that they have no bearing as far as
they are concerned.

Coincidence and feelings are hard to combat here.

Not helping does not mean not hurting.

Good backlinks help, bad backlinks don't do much.

Too many people concentrate on 1,000's of backlinks
instead of a few that are top notch.

Keep getting quality backlinks and you have nothing to fear.

Paul

[Mark Blaze]

It's mainly about the links getting deleted over them being spammy.

You could build 10k spammy backlinks but it's only if they get deleted that they become a problem (which is normally the case with spammy backlinks).

Mark Blaze

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Stephen we argued on what I considered a bad post before so its only fair to comment on this one.

Great post! the argument that you can't hurt a competitor with bad links is not as airtight as people make it out to be. Your competitor already has links that Google ranked them for. This gives them link variety.

Google couldn't care less about new domains.

Here's my theory on this (note the word "theory")...

When you first start out with a new domain, it has no history at all. Obtaining the magic number of the right links puts it up on the first page. In fact, your still dewy-fresh site bumps mine down the list, and I don't like it.

So I deliberately go out and set up a bunch of crappy links - spam profiles, blog comments, junk articles, junk directories. Maybe I even pop for a few paid links from known shady characters. All in all, it looks like a single individual is trying to game the system, leaving every clumsy footprint possible.

Sure enough, without enough weight on the other side of the scale, your site starts sinking rapidly until you can pile up enough links and such on the "good" side of the scale. You keep building a variety of good links, and eventually you have a steady track record as a worthwhile destination. Once you do, the occasional attack doesn't move the scale like it did in the beginning. The only way to bump you off is to have a better site with better links, or for the rules to change.

Reminder, I said this was "theory"...

[jaratvit]

I would like to believe that, having such tons of spammy links from other site shouldnot matter at all, because if it were so, anybody can hurt competitor ranking simply by pointing lot of spammy links to their site. But google has mind of its own, you can read the official word from Google here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...backlinks.html