Quote:
Originally Posted by edgeprod
INBOUND links do not count against you, only OUTBOUND links.
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I used to operate on that assumption. For the simple reason that you have no control over the sites linking TO YOU.
In all honesty, we can never know how google ranks sites, we can only guess. And based on what I've seen happening over the past year and my own tests, I would now say that inbound links can harm you.
That is to say: I wouldn't worry about 1 or 2 strange sites linking to you, but a sudden surge in unnatural looking links does seem to raise some kind of red flag. A red flag that by itself may not be enough to lower your ranking but might add some weight to other red flags google may already have raised about your site.