Linking to questionable sites on the internet, known as a “bad neighborhood,” can harm a site’s search ranking. Scraper sites, link farms, spam or malware-filled sites, and those with illegal content are considered bad neighborhoods. Regularly checking outbound links and using online tools can help avoid linking to them. A single mistake won’t harm rankings, but regular linking can. Complaints can be filed with search engines if penalized in error.
Everyone knows that a bad neighborhood can cause property values to plummet, and the same is true on the internet. Just like a literal bad neighborhood, an internet bad neighborhood is filled with questionable sites, some of which may even be malicious. Linking to such sites can cause a site’s search ranking to drop, and in some cases, a large number of inbound links from a bad neighborhood can also hurt its search ranking.
A wide variety of sites could be considered residing in a bad neighborhood, including scraper sites, link farms, sites with large amounts of spam or malware, or sites with illegal material. If you link to such a site on your own website, you may be aggregated with other nearby sites and penalized accordingly. Likewise, such sites may also try to inflate their search rankings by linking to you, making it appear that they are affiliated with legitimate websites, and some search engines may even penalize people for this.
It’s easy enough to avoid linking to a bad neighborhood, but it’s a good idea to periodically check outbound links on your site. Sometimes, domains expire and are turned into link farms or filled with questionable stuff, so a once valid link becomes bad. On other occasions, you might land on a site in a bad neighborhood entirely by accident, unaware that the site contains large amounts of spam or malware somewhere deep within its depths. Spammers are also notorious for using redirects that can turn good links into bad ones. You can also link to a bad neighborhood via proxy, by connecting to a site that has links to a bad neighborhood.
You can use a number of online tools to scan your domain for bad links; www.bad-neighborhood.com is a good place to start. Most of these tools are free, which is worth it. You can also manually scan links on your site, which can also alert you to any security breaches; Hackers like to attempt to break into server security to place links or other malicious material on websites, especially blogs.
Even a search engine knows that people make mistakes sometimes, so a single link to a bad neighborhood won’t knock you out of the rankings. If, however, a site links to questionable sites on a regular basis, it can start to slip in the rankings or get taken down, in extreme cases. If you think you have been penalized in error, you can file a complaint with the search engine, asking to be re-evaluated and re-entered.
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