What are bad backlinks?

[Latsyrc]

What are considered bad backlinks to stay away from? I am still trying to understand backlinks that can hurt your site. If I hire a backlinking service, they promote your backlinks with article marketing or a blog network, is that considered a "bad backlink" that Google can penalize your site with? I'm confused by the information I'm getting. Why did JCPenney get slapped with their backlinks? What kind of backlinks did they do?

[nicktyler]

They are links that can do the moonwalk suspiciously well!

[Ben K]

If the article is submitted to various site , it will not be too bad . The question is here how much link value they will carry . It depends on where they are submitted.

What are bad links?
A large number of links from a same ip, paid links , links from a page with no content, link from sites that are only built for link exchange, links from sites from link network. You can read here webuildlink.com/link-building-guide.html to know more about signals of good and bad links

[MarketExperience]

You get poor quality backlinks from spamming sites with your link, if your posting on high rank sites then you would want to do it manually or outsource the job. Also stay away from low ranked sites because there not worth your time because they aren't getting any traffic, if your using software then moderate how much your posting. You use alexa.com to rank targeted sites so you know if its worth your time advertise with.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by Latsyrc

What are considered bad backlinks to stay away from? I am still trying to understand backlinks that can hurt your site. If I hire a backlinking service, they promote your backlinks with article marketing or a blog network, is that considered a "bad backlink" that Google can penalize your site with? I'm confused by the information I'm getting. Why did JCPenney get slapped with their backlinks? What kind of backlinks did they do?

Well, obviously you don't want backlinks on a porn site pointing at a Halloween site.

Ask youself this "If an external web page were a real person, would you want to be friends with them"? If the answer is no, then stay away from them (the web page)...

JCPenney only got slapped because a few big mouth know it all seo websites brought the backlink story to the attention of writers for WSJ, then the story went viral all over the net.

Google did a manual smack down, the reason I know it was manual is because JCPenney was ranking good until after the story went viral.

Google simply covered their own a#%, trying to stay out of the negative publicity.

That same backlinking strategy is working today, BMR is proof of that, only not spun articles, still the same concept.

[Latsyrc]

Thanks for your explanation. That makes sense. Now I'm trying to figure out if sites like BMR are someone you would "want to be friends with"? Obviously it is not a "bad" site like gambling, etc. I have done some BMR backlinking. Do you think Google will penalize sites that use article backlinking like BMR, private networks, etc? That is the area I have been using, and am not sure how it is viewed. I don't know if I am making sense, lol.

Backlinks has always been the thing I've struggled with when it comes to internet marketing.

Originally Posted by yukon

Well, obviously you don't want backlinks on a porn site pointing at a Halloween site.

Ask youself this "If an external web page were a real person, would you want to be friends with them"? If the answer is no, then stay away from them (the web page)...

JCPenney only got slapped because a few big mouth know it all seo websites brought the backlink story to the attention of writers for WSJ, then the story went viral all over the net.

Google did a manual smack down, the reason I know it was manual is because JCPenney was ranking good until after the story went viral.

Google simply covered their own a#%, trying to stay out of the negative publicity.

That same backlinking strategy is working today, BMR is proof of that, only not spun articles, still the same concept.

[agmantz]

Originally Posted by cadmo

Links received from sites having adult or porn content, prohibited game sites and family "unsafe" sites are considered as bad backlinks in Google.

You have to make sure that the people you are hiring do not submit to such sites.

@Cadmo

Follow-up question. What will happen if your competition with lots of money submit your sites to these prohibited sites?
will google know? or what will be the best defence on these scenario?

[Mr Lim]

Originally Posted by cadmo

Links received from sites having adult or porn content, prohibited game sites and family "unsafe" sites are considered as bad backlinks in Google.

You have to make sure that the people you are hiring do not submit to such sites.

Add, Torrent sites and Malcious sites.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by agmantz

@Cadmo

Follow-up question. What will happen if your competition with lots of money submit your sites to these prohibited sites?
will google know? or what will be the best defence on these scenario?

I doubt much will happen, still the links you create should stay clean IMO.

If the competition is buying links on porn sites to try & tank your pages in the SERPs, they've got bigger issues besides ranking in the SERPs, suggest that they seek help.

One thing that will hurt you is If you yourself allow porn links on your own site, from others spamming comments on your pages or whatever.

Google looks at it like this, you are the webmaster, you control 100% of the links on your own pages. If a guy allows porn links on his own pages (comment spam), that's his own fault.

Myself, I delete all comment code from my wp-themes php files, I don't allow comments, it keeps my sites easy to manage.

[Raul991]

Originally Posted by Daniel Wilson

I laughed.

But in all seriousness make sure your links are from good neighborhoods with high PR and do-follow "rel" tag.

You do not need only do-follow backlinks, get some nofollow too, because it works and then your linking profile is more natural as well.

[Johnny GotPaid]

They are links that borrow money and never pay you back

[jonnyhardbaked]

I don't personally make it hard for myself in knowing or determining if a particular link will hurt my site or not (I'm not saying that I'm not paying attention to those kinds of links).

If I have a chance to get juice from a particular link, I would do it unless if it is attacked by blatant spammers, or having doubtful things in it.

[instinctis]

There is no such thing as a bad backlink, otherway if one would like to knock out all the competitors will simply have to submit the competitors domains to a bunch of adult websites and the competitors problem would have vanished away ... but it simply does not work that way.
The bad links are only the ones pointing out from own domain to the wrong ones ;-)

[transcriptionservices]

hey,
The backlinks that are mostly not advantageous and are redirected to non useful pages are bad backlinks.

[josegordon123]

Getting a variety of backlink sources is also one way to earn a positive impact on Google, especially if they are "authority" sites. Beware of backlink services that get links to your site from the same sources because it will alert Google. You might even get tagged as spamming!

[Matt Baker]

I think bad backlinks are from spammed sites/blog. I don't know but its just my opinion

[epathj]

spam and not related content always makes your backlinks bad, authority content always bring quality backlinks

[Dentist]

Originally Posted by yukon

Well, obviously you don't want backlinks on a porn site pointing at a Halloween site.

Ask youself this "If an external web page were a real person, would you want to be friends with them"? If the answer is no, then stay away from them (the web page)...

JCPenney only got slapped because a few big mouth know it all seo websites brought the backlink story to the attention of writers for WSJ, then the story went viral all over the net.

Google did a manual smack down, the reason I know it was manual is because JCPenney was ranking good until after the story went viral.

Google simply covered their own a#%, trying to stay out of the negative publicity.

That same backlinking strategy is working today, BMR is proof of that, only not spun articles, still the same concept.

Can't agree more and I want to add some extra points. Don't do highly suspicious activities. Anything that is not common sense from your point of view, it probably is not common sense from Google's point of view and although they close their eyes to many of them, they act upon some of them for different reasons (At least that's what I understand). Here are some examples:
- Is it common sense to have a website up yesterday and have it 10000 backlinks today? Unless you are Justin Bieber, it is not!
- Is it common sense to have 1000 backlinks for three consecutive months and then have zero for 6 months? No, if you are popular yesterday there is a chance your popularity continues although at a different pace.
- Does that usually happen in real world that you get 10000 backlinks from one website (let's say Facebook for example) and get none from anybody else? No, if people are talking about you on Facebook they probably are talking about you in other places too.
- Does it make sense to have all of your backlinks in one type. Let's say all do-follow or all article-marketing or all with the same anchor text? No. In real world, real backlinks vary from many aspects because hypothetically they are being generated by real people not webmasters and they don't know what the hell they are doing.
- Does it make sense to have many backlinks all with anchor texts and none with your URL or your name? You know the answer.
You can think of many scenarios like those. Not that if you don't do those things you get penalized, but if they have to penalize somebody for some reason, they go after low-hanging fruits first as well.

[Dentist]

And I forgot to mention:
Does it make sense to have thousands of new backlinks for a website with no new content in the previous 12 months or no useful content at all? Well, the answer is not always. You can be highly stupid and still highly popular but most of the times you should have at least something (look, smarts, etc) to be popular and do some activities (new content and new backlinks) to remain popular.

[DonMecca]

linkfarms, places with very high OBL (Out Bound Link) numbers. Obviously illegal sites and content. Aswell you don't want to get jammed up by antiviruses or browser plugins that consider your site dangerous based on where its been linked from..etc..etc

[Nscnikhil]

Links from spam sites or sites that have been banned by search engines can be considered as bad links

[hostingraja]

While you get the backlinks from unrelated content web pages, junk websites, sex websites etc., those websites are links Google will consider spam links.

[Delois]

Bad backlinks means Link farms. You will get the back link from the spamming site or from doing the black hat SEO.

[melltonroper]

Using software to generate links indeed can produce bad backlinks to your site!

[AravGupta]

Backlinks coming from directories that are full of spam can also affect your submissions. The same thing can be said about blog commenting. If you are commenting on a dofollow blog where a lot of spammers have already commented including their spammy links can affect you.

[transcriptionservices]

hey,
Link received from sites that are spammed or banned by google or from sites having inappropriate content are called bad backlinks.

[Kom]

Good to know This !

Thanks

[Barry Unruh]

Do you mean "bad links" or "low value" links?

If you listen closely to what Matt Cutts and other Google representatives state about the only links they list as guaranteed to harm you are links from paid sources. When those get called to their attention they take action....if they find out.

Now, they do assign extremely low to zero value to links from a wide assortment of places. This changes on a constant basis as people try to game the system.

Will having links from adult sites harm you? Probably no. They just won't do you any good.

I'd be more worried if you were linking OUT to similar sites. Then YOU are making the DECISION to associate with a bad neighborhood.

Gosh....If creating backlinks from adult sites will plummet the rankings of those top ten sites in one of my niches...Just think of the possibilities...