what constitutes spam links?

[David]

I just saw a post about negative seo or dirty tricks to knock out your competition.

fair topic, doesn't apply to me but we should all be on guard if someone gets underhanded towards us.

Logged into Yahoo site explorer, I'd changed some blogspot templates and had to reinstall the metatag verifying my blog to yahoo site explorer...

Ok, I see one of my blogs has 330 incoming links! Great, that's better than it was, then I see this button where we can mark an incoming link as spam.

Now I just saw a thread on this, and now I really dunno if this is good or not.

A while back I commented on this guys blog, ended up with a link pointing to my blog, I just forgot about it.

for some reason that one comment seems to have generated dozens and dozens of incoming links?

is this a good thing or... what constitutes a spam incoming link?

how can ANY incoming link be bad?

I don't understand
please advise
thanks

[dburk]

Hi David,

Google does not hold you accountable for incoming links from bad neighborhoods. However, they do hold you accountable for links on your own website that link out to bad neighborhoods.

Take note that if you do not have a sufficient number of relevant links to your website, those bad links could confuse the search engine's ability to accurately determine relevant terms for your pages.

[David]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi David,

Google does not hold you accountable for incoming links from bad neighborhoods. However, they do hold you accountable for links on your own website that link out to bad neighborhoods.

Take note that if you do not have a sufficient number of relevant links to your website, those bad links could confuse the search engine's ability to accurately determine relevant terms for your pages.

Why would Yahoo have a method of identifying an incoming link as spam?

site in question is a blog: Life in Frederick Maryland

I put a yahoo site explorer badge on it, click on the badge and you'll see all the incoming links yahoo can find. I saw a video Matt Cutts put out answering a question about incoming links and he said to use this yahoo tool.

I'd already been using that tool but hearing Cutts say to use it made me think perhaps it's a pretty good tool for Google to tell you to use it.

=====
not sure what's up with Cutts' telling people to use siteexplorer when there are lots of link pop checkers available.

anyway should I worry about this guy linking to me or is he doing me a favor?

I'm building a local portal, entire blog system themed for my local area...
the incoming links appear to be similiarly themed

evans ink Blog Archive Introducing localguides.com: local, meet social. social, meet vertical.

so is this a good thing for me and if so why is there a 'report spam' button on the site explorer?

thanks
you guys/gals are some of the only people on this planet that have those answers and willingness to share them.

[Jon Alexander]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi David,

Google does not hold you accountable for incoming links from bad neighborhoods. However, they do hold you accountable for links on your own website that link out to bad neighborhoods.

Take note that if you do not have a sufficient number of relevant links to your website, those bad links could confuse the search engine's ability to accurately determine relevant terms for your pages.

I've always believed incoming links can't hurt you. But what if Google could detect that you owned the other domains too? I wonder if suddenly there WOULD be an effect?

[Bruce Hearder]

Originally Posted by Jon Alexander

I've always believed incoming links can't hurt you. But what if Google could detect that you owned the other domains too? I wonder if suddenly there WOULD be an effect?

They do that right now!! And they current thinking is that they devalue these incoming links to ZERO.

So if you are goinjg to make your own links (see my signature), then make sure thay are all on different IP addresses, at least different C-Block IP addresses, make sure the whois info is different and the nameservers are different..

Is easier to do than you think, but it has to be thought out..

Take care

Bruce