I have had some incidents of spammers trying to put their ads on my forum. I removed them all but now I find that they have created links in their adult sites which point to their profile on the forum. I have nothing whatsoever to do with them. Will it affect the rating of my site? How can I make them remove those links. Any help is appreciated. Thanks
yes this definitely will affect your rankings if you get backlinks from bad sites but porn is not a bad site, bad sites are those who use Black hat techniques and get banned by google.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a recent rise in negative SEO due to how easy it is to trigger a penalty. I don't know if there is a whole lot you can do about it, but I have this crazy theory that the Caffeine update seems to fix it by just ignoring suspicious link structures rather than penalizing them. If your sites have a lot of good, strong links - and you haven't linked out to anyone too bad - you shouldn't be too affected by some bad income links. You might want to keep an eye on the analytics for any odd behavior, though. Always better safe than sorry.
Yes, that will effect your rankings. You have 2 options: 1. You have to ask them to remove the links 2. Remove that page from your site to which they are pointing. (But, If you have more valuable things on that page, then NO USE, you have to request them to remove your link from there.)
although that is very difficult to predict about the ranking, although that is also true all the porn sites doesn't impact negative to the site. Also they are the link to which you can't do anything
Contrary to popular perception, google rankings will not adversely affect your site just because you have a link pointing at your site from a porn / unfavorable niche. This is because you have no control over the link. However, you will be penalized if a link originates from your site pointing to a porn site.
It will not affect your site as long the site is not banned or do not use any black hat technique. if your still worried send them email or talk to the owner of the site and ask to remove the links.
This actually made more sense, but if youre still worry just do what the poster above says, delete their user account which should automatically delete their profile page as well. Just as an interesting observation, do a 'buy viagra' search on google without the quotes, no2 and 3 are forum profile, so the technique works.
THANK YOU!! Finally someone that knows what they are talking about.... Over and over and over people perpetuate myths... Heres a quote.. According to Neil Shearing "...if Google were to penalise a site for links pointing into it, every single competitive business out there would hire SEO agents to build “bad†links into their competitor’s sites instead of “good†links into their own!" .... please stop with the myths
"Bad" links are not bad unless you link back to them from your own domains. Matt Cutts Addressed this issue recently actually implying that these links could in fact boost you a little. It's linking back to these sites... such as in letting users post links on your own properties to theirs that can hurt you. As long as it is an incoming one way link no problem. Search Engines understand you can not control everyone who links to you. If you could then competitors would simply place bad links to you and ruin your ranking.
The answer to this is simple. Disable links from your forum signature links (or make them invisible to search engines by doing what I recommend with the profiles...), and make sure that users have to register and login in order to view their profiles. Then get "healthy" links pointing to your Web site.
Thanks Dan. I read your articles too and totally agree with you. I have a forum where I provide free chemistry help to students and have no time/ patience for spammers who try to advertise viagra or sell porn from my forum. I use a SMF forum and ban them the moment I get to know anyone who posts anything of the kind. My forum is located at http://chemtopper.com/smf/index.php It is surprising how quickly these people surface and despite having a captcha to prevent auto submissions, they keep nosing around. And the worst of course is what I mentioned in my question - they setting up links in their sites which point to their profiles in the forum - as if I am one of them.- There has to be some regulatory policy for them. Your comments/ suggestions are welcome. Thanks.
You have no control of incoming links, unless you added them to a directory or whatever but as far as I know, there's no penalty for incoming links. It's the out going links that can hurt you.
That will show a small (and practically useless) subset of links. The best (and only) way to see what links Google knows about regarding your site is to log in to Google Webmasters' Central and use their link tools.