Should I sell a link to a site with negative rating?

[MeanSEO]

I stumbled upon an interesting tool called MacAfee Site adviser which rates sites based upon their own analysis as well as “reviewer” feedback.

When playing with this tool I found one of my oldest sites was black listed (red warning) because a large sponsor who I linked to had another site that spammed heavily as well as link to another site that has a browser exploit.

Many program owners and affiliates claim that the MacAfee Site adviser is very inaccurate and not even worth looking at. I still decided to remove all links to the bad sponsors and months later my site is still black listed.

My main focus is off affiliate programs but now selling advertising on my portal sites. My local salesperson and I made a personal calls on a well known and respected prospective client who told us that we are going to get at least a few thousand dollars a year in advertising from them.

While doing some searches through organic search results I noticed that this client is being flagged for spamming (2.9 emails a week which earned them a red danger rating) and that they link to another site that is also rated poorly. The other site carried a comment “When we tested this site we found links to free-webspace.biz, which we found to be a distributor of downloads some people consider adware, spyware or other unwanted programs.”

Should I place any weight on worrying that MacAfee Site adviser can give me a negative rating if I link to this prospective customer?

Can a SE such as Google, MSN, or Yahoo “see” a negative rating now or in the future and penalize me? I do see that 99.9% of the time 1st page SE results almost never have any sites flagged as yellow (caution) or red (warning).

[patrickkidda]

I was going to download it to see for myself & ran into this, which is probably a bit dated, but has a lot of negative opinions flying about the site advisor

http://msmvps.com/blogs/spywaresucks/archive/2006/09/30/147191.aspx

[incrediblehelp]

So I guess I missing the quesiton. Why even deal with someone that "might be" or "could" be spamming.

[craigmn3]

This is a question of perception. McAffee will have no effect on your Seach Engine Results.

It is reported that approximatly one third of internet users have some form of McAffee coverage (that number seems very high to me, I would place it at 25%) that means who ever has McAffee with site advisor is going to see and avoid any poorly ranked site. So while you may get a high rating on the Search Engines....one in four (or perhaps 3) will avoid you. I would pay attention to that.

[brucet]

I came across Site Advisor recently and started using it, so it's good to know about it's limitations - thanks. I will definitely look at some of the other options for anti-phishing protection.

That said, most problems on our PCs at home have come from free games, screen savers and toolbars that members of the family have downloaded and installed, not realising they came with various kinds of hidden baggage. Site Advisor does seem to provide some warning against this type of threat - so I still think it's worthwhile.

[pdstein]

We've had ongoing issues with SiteAdvisor for almost a year now. They red-flagged our site, misrepresented the issue in their comments, and after we addressed the real issue almost a year ago they continue to drag their feet on updating the information on their site.

craigmn3 is absolutely right - it's a matter of perception. A lot of people use the SiteAdvisor browser plugin and trust it implicitly. If your site gets red-flagged whether it's legit or not or by association some people will run from your site the moment they see that.

[MeanSEO]

Maybe my tinfoil hat was wrapped to tight so I don’t have to worry about the SEs but right or wrong there is compelling evidence that I don’t want to be yellow or red in Site Advisers eyes so I must avoid linking to such sites and now it looks as though I have to be able to remove links if a client goes yellow or red as well.

This means I must change my contracts and may have to cancel subscriptions and refund the balance that a customer may not have used.

What a bummer :( but thanks for the input.