Google: Poor Incoming Links Don’t Hurt

As far as the search engines are concerned, it has long been speculated and claimed that receiving links from “bad neighborhoods” could hurt a website; you know, those pill-n-casino sites. It makes perfect sense - if you run around with spammers, getting link benefit from them, the value and integrity of your site should be questioned, as well.

Not so, says Vanessa Fox of the Google Sitemaps team:

In general, linking to web spammers and “bad neighborhoods” can harm your site’s indexing and ranking. And while links from these sites won’t harm your site, they won’t help your indexing or ranking. Only natural links add value and are helpful for indexing and ranking your site.

This also makes sense. How can you be responsible for the linking practices of a third party?

In any case, this seems to be a deviation from the inherently ambiguous language of their Webmaster Guidelines:

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

Then again, it is from the horse’s mouth. Take it with a grain of salt, if you will.