Inbound links of any type will not get you banned

I don't think any kind of IBL will hurt your site unless you link back with it...

 

A few months ago a few people (including me) had sites banned completely from google. The common factor was that we had all bought links on a site that was quite an important authority site that then started selling links to all kinds of bad neighbourhoods.

There was no doubt at all that it was the inbound links that had caused the problem - pretty much all the sites with links bought from this particular site got banned at the same time.

Unusual perhaps, and probably needed human intervention at google, but I am completely positive it can (and does) happen.

 

My site was also affect by that same thing and its not just the small guys.
www.gocompare.com also got hit, was ranking #1 for the keyword "car insurance" but was ban for 3 days then brought back with a -50 penalty, like the rest of us.

Read about it here: http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/365066/gocompare-feels-effects-of-google-penalty.html

You can find much more about "goCompare.com" since it was big site so alot of people looked into it.

I think Google can't prove if you bought links or not, BUT they don't have to. If your link profile looks suspicious then they might just hit you with a penalty. We can say whatever we want like there is no proof, but will google even respond to that.

 

You build to many links or put too many links from same I.P to a new site and you can get banned. I have done it.. Established sites may not be effected.

 

Or at least it should be that way.
I'm not sure "bad" links are completely harmless though.

zingo is right.

 

But isn't it true that if you build TOO MANY links too fast you can get Google slapped?

 

yes you can spollen770, I didn't think it was possible until it happened to me. But I think it was a combination of too many links and too much PR juice too fast.

 

I agre with Ashish..

 

I agree with this as well. Whether its a human or algorithm penalty/ban, I don't know. But from experience I can tell you links to your site can hurt your SERPS. Google may not publicly admit inbound links can hurt your site, but their motiviation in silence is designed to discourage sabatoge.

And don't think nofollow links protect you from penalties. I recently knocked a site out of the SERPS with one nofollow link I had paid for. I think Google's algorithm needs some work, and this is just an example of that.

 

I agree with the theory that google cant penalize a site for any off site factors but in practice I think there is evidence of this.

I had a site that was ranking well for a keyword after a few months. I had about 400 links. 200 of those were from a sitewide paid link. When I cancelled the link and google updated my links I was nowhere to be seen for any keyword for about a month and now I rank in the 600s and 700s for a few keywords so there was obviously some kind of penalty for losing half my links overnight.

 

All I see is anectodal evidence. Websites get dropped from rankings for many reasons, but having too many inbound links is never one of them. The same goes for getting banned.

 

Beware!! link farm or any auto sumbit url softwares.

 

Sweet... that means i'll buy 10,000 links at once and point them to your site. Say good buy to your link popularity!

Seriously - it will not hurt a site, it just won't do anything for it. If it's duplicate content on 10,000 sites, I bet they factor in date plus site popularity to determine which article is the orginal source.

At least the original poster has a clue.

 

It does not make sense at all that incoming links can harm, it completely ruins Google Logic and Logic in general.
BUT

What can we do if Google does otherwise !!

Here are some statments Matt Cutts has made and some other Google Employees on in coming links:

Matt Cutts (Google Employee): "The recommendation from your SEO guy led you directly into a pretty high- risk area; I doubt you really want pages like http://www.fuckingfilthy.com/filthy-hardcore/amateur-black-teen-sex-f... having sponsored links to your furniture site anyway. It's definitely possible to extricate your site, but I would make an effort to contact the sites with your sponsored links and request that they remove the links, and then do a reconsideration request. Maybe in the text of your reconsideration request, I'd include a pointer to this thread as well."
Link: http://groups.google.com/group/Goog...read/thread/59e796b85327a4b2/46249301c589d6c8

Matt Cutts (Google Employee): "ShyBoy, have you been collecting backlinks in any unusual ways? It
looks like you may have, and I would pay special attention to that."
link: http://groups.google.com/group/Goog...read/thread/59e796b85327a4b2/59ff6ae317b03ee3

JohnMu (Google Employee): "Similar to how you have removed spammy links in your own forum, you may want to consider what you can do to help clean up similar links on other people's sites. Blogs and newspaper sites such as http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com sometimes receive short comments such as "dont agree", apparently only for a link back to a site. These comments often use keywords from that site instead of a user name, perhaps "tree bench" for a furniture site or "sexy shoes" for a footwear site. If this kind of behavior might have taken place for your site, you may want to work on rectifying it and include some information on it in your reconsideration request. Given your situation, the person considering your reconsideration request might be curious about links like that, so the more you can explain about that, that may help as well."
Link: http://groups.google.com/group/Goog...read/thread/59e796b85327a4b2/5dcb344596bf24f5

They might not admit it 100%, but come on, they should be telling us "Dont Worry, Incoming Links Cannot Hurt You In Any Way, Nobody Can Hurt Your Rankings, If Its Not In Your Control." Thats what I wanna hear, but they wont say it.

 

Charlee22 - way to misquote Matt Cutts... lol.

Right after writing: ""ShyBoy, have you been collecting backlinks in any unusual ways? It
looks like you may have, and I would pay special attention to that.", he adds:

"For example, if you had been attempting to get PageRank via paid links
on various templates, then when that PageRank stops flowing (e.g. if
Google improves its detection in various ways), the fact that you have
less PageRank can also mean that a site won't rank as well. "

In other words, the guy built shitty inbound links, and google stopped counting them at some point, so he dropped in SERPs.

I don't know why I even bother, go ahead and believe what ever you want. Just means less competition for SERPs for me.

 

Many personal injury law firms engage in link buying and I have seen their PR drop from 6 and 7's to 4's and 5's in the last big PR update. They might be engaging in other activities as well but I know some that buy tons.

 

Korzon - Way to completely skip the other quotes:

Matt Cutts (Google Employee): "ShyBoy, have you been collecting backlinks in any unusual ways? It
looks like you may have, and I would pay special attention to that."
link: http://groups.google.com/group/Googl...ff6ae317b03ee3

(Why does it matter what links are incoming if you are not linking back ?? Is matt cutts just assuming that 'shyboy' bought those links ? In any case, they penalize you first without warning and after your run around trying to find out why your are penalized. they give you anwers like "I would check who is linking to you" )

Also, why skip JonMu's suggestion !!
JohnMu (Google Employee): "Similar to how you have removed spammy links in your own forum, you may want to consider what you can do to help clean up similar links on other people's sites. Blogs and newspaper sites such as http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com sometimes receive short comments such as "dont agree", apparently only for a link back to a site. These comments often use keywords from that site instead of a user name, perhaps "tree bench" for a furniture site or "sexy shoes" for a footwear site. If this kind of behavior might have taken place for your site, you may want to work on rectifying it and include some information on it in your reconsideration request. Given your situation, the person considering your reconsideration request might be curious about links like that, so the more you can explain about that, that may help as well."
Link: http://groups.google.com/group/Googl...cb344596bf24f5

(Whatever the case maybe, why is JohnMu telling him to check in incoming links ? What if shyboy didn;t build those blog comment links ?? In any case they penalized him and after shyboy tried to find out what happened, they gave him these reasons, Useless after you are penalized.)

What I mean is, from these quotes, you can't really say incoming links can't hurt. Its a shame but looks like Googles logic is whatever they feel like.

 

I think it is not advisable to build links too fast and too many, one of my competitors who build link aggressively was slam with a -50 from google too.

 

I think its quite obvious that if a new website suddenley gets 1000 backlinks with identical text that they have been paid for and Google will easily see this. After all what are the chances of a new site being linked to by 1000 different writers using identical text? This is why a lot of the submission companies out there now offer a service where you can supply many text title and description variables.

Gradual submission and link building with varying text is the most healthiest option if you are going to pay someone to do it for you. Make sure they don't just use submission software and identical information for every submission.

 

Yes, it is obvious and correct, and many of us have seen sites penalised like this.

But the OP is suggesting (not unreasonably) that it can't happen because otherwise we could all get cheap directory submissions etc done for our competitors and, in principle, we shouldn't be able to damage our competitors.

Unfortunately a lot of us have seen it working in practice so it certainly can happen - I've killed a site (my own) using this 'technique' on at least one occasion.

I guess that only new sites are penalised for this, because a very high % of their links are identical - and we wouldn't bother attacking a new site because it wouldn't yet be a competitor. Older sites would have more variety in their existing anchor text etc so attacking them like this wouldn't work. Just a theory though.

This is probably a different issue to the one earlier in the thread, where sites mentioned were banned/penalised for having a couple of links from very bad neighbourhoods.