Getting Penalized for Back Links

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I have read much about this topic and wanted to see what others thought.

Can someone linking to you cause your site to be penalized? When some one's site drops in the SERPS I hear people say all the time that maybe your site was penalized because you have "bad" or "spam" websites linking to you.

I know the overwhelming consensus is that this cannot effect your rankings. People say this because if Google penalized you for who links to you then you could easily knock out your competition by getting links from "bad" sites to their website.

I would normally agree with this but, I do know that a huge flood of back links all at once can cause a site to lose rankings. Since this is the case, how easy would it be for someone to just send a huge amount of back links to a competitor's site in a short amount of time and virtually knock them out of rankings?

I look forward to the responses.
#search engine optimization #back #google penalty #links #penalized
  • I'm in a position to test the scenario you are describing and I did so in the past. The consensus regarding a few 'spammy' links wont hurt is indeed correct. I linked from around 400 'bad' sources to one of my sites just for a test and the rankings dropped a few days later only to come back stronger then ever.

    Regarding your actually question: Been there, done that.
    Just for some testing I sent over 100,000 mixed backlinks to one of my local niche sites to see what would happen. With mixed backlinks I mean around 50k forum profiles, 40k blog comments, 5k article links, 5k linkwheels and bookmarks.
    The target site had a DA of 2 years, 120 BLs and ranked nowhere for the target keyword. The links were created in a time span of 2 weeks.

    My hypothesis was that my site would get instant sandboxed for creating that much backlinks in such a short time and it did or so I thought.
    2 days after the start of the blast my site was nowhere to be seen in google not even with the site operator. I let the schedule run its course and even after a month the site was nowhere to be seen. I decided to continiously drip some backlinks(around 500 a week) and to my surprise after 3 months off continious backlinking my site suddenly ranked for the target keyword.

    Yes my site did get sandboxed. No this was not definite. And yes my site came back stronger then ever. The cost you might ask? Around 3 months of continious linkbuilding effort, over 130,000 backlinks with a price tag of around €500. Worth testing? Yes. Worth repeating? No, in the same timespan you could have set up a slower linkbuilding campaign to get the same results for a lower price tag.
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Thank you chinmokuyuuki!

      Great stuff.

      Did the local niche site where you sent 100,000 mixed back links stay ranking until this day or has it dropped again?
      • [2] replies
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    Getting Penalized for Back Links

    I have read much about this topic and wanted to see what others thought. Can someone linking to you cause your site to be penalized? When some one's site drops in the SERPS I hear people say all the time that maybe your site was penalized because you have "bad" or "spam" websites linking to you.