A question about bad neighborhoods and Links

[autorave]

A question I've always wondered about ..

Is it OK to have reciprocal links to websites in bad neighbourhoods, if I link to them with NoFollow while they link to me with a normal link?

Will my site still be penalized if this is done?

[kemus]

It depends. I wouldnt do it, but I've heard that 'Nofollow' means you dont trust the site. I wouldnt do it because it doesnt gain me anything. The bad neighberhood site won't give you rankings/PR/etc.

[hhheng]

For google, it will not harm your PR and ranking. But for yahoo, it will do, because in most case Inktomi Slurp ignore the nofollow attribute.

[autorave]

Hmm alright .. thanks for the answers guys!

[Sunny side]

Mutt Cutts on his blog used no follow tag when he was talking about a black hat seo site - so I rather doubt it is going to hurt if you put a link to spammy site, rather a question wether their spider will be OK with you using no follow tag :)

[Ashwini]

The site from which you are having bad neighbourhood liks are either spammy or built to provide links to all or the site owner is not at all concern about it's links . I prefer to have less good links rather then having a lot of poor links.
Regards.
Ashwini