Can Google penalize me, or even ban me, because of curtain forum posts? Because some members have posted a few messages with a lot of links in them. I'm unsure wether to delete them or not. I rather not because the forum is rather empty and every post is welcome and because I want to create a 'open' community.So should I delete them or not? Because I'm new I cant link to it yet but please take a look at the forum (and judge the situation), by visiting my site located in my profile. Please help!
Forgot to mention: My PR went down from 2 to 0 recently. google is showing 0 backlinks but my Google ranking is generally increased over the last few months. (yahoo shows 800+ backlinks)
I wouldn't worry about the change in pr - there has been an update recently that saw massive decreases for many sites, including this forum. PR is anyway pretty useless as a metric. As to managing posts on your forum, I would introduce a set of basic rules which would keep the conversation going and at the same time hold outright spammers somewhat at bay. You can't hope to accumulate a lot of genuine users all the same if the forum is packed with massive links and stuff.
If the links go to places where copyright protected content can be downloaded, you really need to delete those links. Even though "you" may not have posted the links, google still sees it as promoting the theft of copyright protected content. That is the only thing I would worry about.
Okay thanks for your help, both of you. I will look right away if the links point to illegal content. Also I might post some basic rules, (respect for other users, no warez etc.)
Yeah insert some read before posting rules so members are aware that they should not post too many links in a post.
Will not penalize but will be degraded... IF contains muc hspam post and singnature( out bound links)... Now Found many forum site degraded from 6-4 5-2 3 -0 etc...So has to be carefull and do proper monitoring