Can links to me hurt?

[stuart888]

Can links to my website from off topic sites actually hurt my site. I have a web site about Florida travel, would a link from an adult forum or non-Florida related site actually hurt, more than it helps?

If so, could a competitor not go to a bad site, like a adult site and post links to my site to hurt my PR?

Thanks for any thoughts, Stuart

[mjtaylor]

Can links to my website from off topic sites actually hurt my site. I have a web site about Florida travel, would a link from an adult forum or non-Florida related site actually hurt, more than it helps?

If so, could a competitor not go to a bad site, like a adult site and post links to my site to hurt my PR?

Thanks for any thoughts, Stuart

No, IBLs cannot hurt your site or affect your PR in a negative way. You can't control who links to you and SEs know that.

All is well, MJ

[mtb167]

Correct. You used to be able to screw people over by getting them all sorts of links from web sites that had incredibly varied link text, so google couldn't figure out the wheat from the shaft (i shouldn't used analogies i don't understand) and you might drop for a certain word because your page wasn't optimized for it and google couldn't infer any relevance from the link text.

But ever since they fixed the whole "miserable failure" link bomb gobbily gook, you're safe from even that sort of anti-link spam.

[mjtaylor]

Correct. You used to be able to screw people over by getting them all sorts of links from web sites that had incredibly varied link text, so google couldn't figure out the wheat from the shaft (i shouldn't used analogies i don't understand) and you might drop for a certain word because your page wasn't optimized for it and google couldn't infer any relevance from the link text.

But ever since they fixed the whole "miserable failure" link bomb gobbily gook, you're safe from even that sort of anti-link spam.

Hmmm ... I didn't know that there was ever a time that IBLs could harm a site in the way you describe - I do recall the "miserable failure" hooha but I didn't see it as a way to dilute your other keyword relevance. Perhaps that is so.

BTW, it's "wheat from the *chaff*" - chaff being the unusable part of the wheat; ergo that which is unwanted.

Cheers, MJ

[mtb167]

Chaff - I knew it!

Funny. I have the world's knowledge in the search bar of the upper right hand corner of my browser and I didn't even bother to look it up.

And as far as the ability to dilute anchor text... I say this because I have a prolific spammer buddy that used to get paid to do that. He told me it worked, and he got paid for it. Unfortunately I never asked for the proof. So, yes it is still speculative.

As a rule of thumb, i will agree however that no additional links posted outside of your site will effect it negatively.

[DrTandem1]

As far as SEs go, no, IBLs can not hurt your site. However, if such IBLs are from objectionable sites, the visitors to those sites may think you're associated.

If OBLs could harm a site, it would be a very simple matter to attack a rival site. Bottom line, it's to whom your site links that can harm your site.

[incrediblehelp]

I don't feel IBLs to your website can hurt you, except for the fact described above. Someone can get you ranked on weird or objectionable terms which can cause issues.

[stuart888]

Thanks to everyone, and it appears all agree that I have nothing to be concerned about. What got me my fears started, was signing up with some blogs and forums that were related to florida travel and recreation. So I used the forum/blog for a while, then I noticed that a lot of hackers seemed to take over and saw many adult posts. I was considering going to a lot of trouble to attempt to edit or delete all of my posts. But based upon your feedback, I will just not use them, but not worry about IBLs to my site.

Thanks so much all,

Regards, Stuart

[Clint1]

As far as MSN goes, they personally told me that certain links CAN hurt you.

[noel_x99]

Clint, can you give us any more info on that.

Based on what I've seen MSN doesn't seem to weight links very heavily at all.

[mjtaylor]

As far as MSN goes, they personally told me that certain links CAN hurt you.


Clint, can you give us any more info on that.

I would like more info on that, too, Clint. And who are "they?"

It doesn't seem at all logical that inbound links can hurt a site. If they could then you could wipe out a competitor by submitting their site to link farms.



Based on what I've seen MSN doesn't seem to weight links very heavily at all.

That would be contrary to my understanding and experience but I am not an MSN expert - it is the easiest of the three SEs to place in, and the least worthwhile. I focus on Google first, then turn my attention to Y! and since I never succeed with both G and Y, I have never gotten around to MSN.

If you read the forums, MSN is considered by many SEOs to rely heavily on anchor text and MSN certainly makes a clear statements in its site owner guidelines (http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_REF_Guidelinesfo rOptimizingSite.htm) about linking structure *within* a site - so I would assume links are important.

As I see it, MJ

[Clint1]

Noel and MJ, I don't really have anymore info on that. Several months back I was getting some pages deleted from the MSN index (has since be fixed but I don't know how)*. So I asked them what the problem was. In addition to any SE's regular BS on the subject, they said something like: "We checked your site and did not see a problem with it. It could be that others are linking to you in an unrelated field". To make a long story short, I blew up and lit into them telling the morons we, site owners, have absolutely no control on how OTHER PEOPLE link to one's site, nor HOW they do it. Then they replied "we don't seem to see that happening in your case". Whether that last reply was indeed true or just a cop-out in efforts to indemnify themselves on "being another google" by doing stupid things, I don't know. *FAIK they could have heeded my rant to them and put some of my pages back in the index.

I'm more inclined to believe it was a cop-out because there are some parasites linking to me that I cannot change. They all use bogus fraudulent whois info with no contact info at their scraper parasite sites. So my hands are tied. There should be a class-action lawsuit on this when it hurts innocent site owners...and that's against ALL of the SE's.

If I had to give advice on the matter, I'd say check your IBL's (which could be a daunting task depending on how many IBL's one has), and see how many of them are from parasites. Unless the page has a high PR, try and get them to remove your link. (Pathetic isn't it what it would come down to G's PR crap).

[weblaunchphxx]

I think that backlinks will not hurt your site rank.It will help to improve your PR.

[erikko]

i think links from forums can't really hurt but try to post it on a related category say if your site is about cars then try to post it on forums for cars and be vigilant to post from off-topic forums for you to gain reputation with regards to your post, and your site as well. remember that when you are posting on forums, you are carrying the reputation of your site as well

[crankydave]

Not sure why this thread got ressurected, but the short answer is...

Yes, IBL's *can* hurt a site. It really depends upon the link profile of a site to begin with and why it's so important to build and continue building a strong link profile.

A very large influx of links from *undesirable* sites can hurt the overall link profile of a site and cause problems. A very large influx of links all at once, ie 1000 page sitewide, can also trigger problems.

Dave

[coolguy27]

No, IBLs cannot hurt your site or affect your PR in a negative way. You can't control who links to you and SEs know that.

All is well, MJ


Agree, IBLs cannot hurt your site unless it doesn't come from bad neighborhood...
But if it comes from bad neighborhood you can email those who links you.... :D

And definitely agree that you can't control those who links to you...

[incrediblehelp]

Not sure why this thread got ressurected

People find threads that rank well and then post on them thinking this will help their IBLs. happens a lot here at WPW.

[tomcatuk]

Does it work then?

;)

[incrediblehelp]

tom doesnt help much in Google, but other SE's like Yahoo maybe so.

[tomcatuk]

Sorry, that last post wasn't much by way of entering the discussion. I have (I think) got a problem with incoming links myself at the moment. I'm trying to work out where they came from (trawling the results in Yahoo! Site Explorer) as I seem to have picked up about 500 new backlinks from somewhere - this has directly coincided with a drop from page 2 of google.com to page 11 for my favourite keyword. Long tail results don't seem to have been affected at all.

Assuming the new links (I honestly can't think of anything I've done that would create 500 or so overnight) are the cause, I'd imagine after a while Google will settle down and "forgive" my site.

[tomcatuk]

Ah, here's a thought. A forum I used to post to a lot, but don't visit much now accounts for a large number of backlinks. I've just had a glance and the forum mods have added the lovely rel="nofollow" to all the user sigs - so maybe that's it. Google thinks I have "lost" a hundred or so backlinks overnight, rather than penalising for some new ones.

[crankydave]

Tom...

Check and see if they may be a sitewide on a particular directory or site. I've seen where some directories have a box or sidebar where they list the "latest" links. For a newer or less frequently submitted to directory, this can cause a single link to be indexed across multiple pages.

Dave

[wige]

I have had similar things happen, albeit on a smaller scale. When a link is created to my site on certain merchandising websites, scraper sites would duplicate the link and surrounding text, so as a result instead of one new link, I might end up with twenty, all showing in Google's index. Often times, that blast of IBLs would jump me in the rankings for a few days, then drop me for a week or so before finally returning to the original position or slightly higher.

[Webnauts]

If we feel that an IBL is hurting us in any way we forbid them to access our site adding two lines in our .htaccess file like this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http(s)?://(www\.)?example.com.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]