What happens if you link to a site that is not found in google's index? Do you get a penalty for doing so? I have the php link directory and some guy has a link in there that I accepted but his site isn't found in the Google index. This seems to correlate to a time when my site started losing traffic and was wondering if this could be the cause. Also, does this penalty happen when someone posts a crappy link in a forum? I'm pretty sure digital point has tons of bad banned links, but it doesn't hurt them.