Bad Neighborhood: Identifying Risky Link Environments and Reacting Cleanly
What a Bad Neighborhood is, when problematic link environments become relevant and how you classify risks for trust and link profile.
The topic is especially important when rankings, trust or the evaluation of external signals are unclear. In practice, it is almost always worth looking at quality, context and risks instead of pure quantity values.
What a Bad Neighborhood is, when problematic link environments become relevant and how you classify risks for trust and link profile. This wiki page arranges the topic practically and shows, When priority arises, which mistakes are often and how you derive concrete measures from them.
Example: Shared server is not link proof
A reputable company website shares an IP address with unknown domains. This alone shows neither cooperation nor a harmful link pattern. Instead, examine specific references: where does the link stand, why was it set, and where does it lead?
A conspicuous link report is an occasion for individual case examination. Don’t delete meaningful connections just because of a low third-party score; origin, context, and one’s own involvement are more meaningful than mere neighborhood on a hosting server.
How do you identify bad neighbors?
Of course, it is not possible to determine at first glance which other website violates the guidelines of Google & Co., but there are symptoms. Notorious bad neighbors can already be recognized by their business model as in real life. Porn and gambling sites count as well as sites that want to sell meaningless products with power.
It basically applies: Who wants to earn fast money with dubious methods, but also who is a follower of obscure philosophies (esotericists, conspiracy theorists, etc.), usually takes it with the Webmaster Guidelines Not too accurate. This is what common sense tells us, while search engine operators define websites with unclean methods quite clearly:
- Domains Notorious for Spam
- Websites that contain only “thin content” (thin, meaning worthless content)
- Websites that purchase purchased backlinks from link farms or are themselves a link farm
- Websites on which there is duplicate content and therefore copyright infringement
Does hosting play a role for the Bad Neighbourhood?
No. This question is often asked. Webmasters are worried that they get into bad neighborhoods because their hoster also picks up infamous websites of the type mentioned. But this must not penalize his other customers, who ultimately cannot necessarily recognize this.
Not even bad neighbors in the same subnet and with the same IP address can have a detrimental impact on a website operator’s SEO. However, there can be an exception to this if the hoster maintains many such websites: He himself belongs to the Bad Neighborhood. However, such cases are rare, because the hoster has none of it.
How can dubious websites be identified?
Apart from the business model, there are some tools with which to check the seriousness of a website in case of doubt. This is relatively important for SEO, because sometimes such pages link to their own page. The webmaster must then devalue these backlinks, for which Google support also has a Guidance delivers. Indicators for a dubious website are very poor content, hints about link purchase on the page, a conspicuous link profile that can be checked with a backlink checker, spam on the page (also keyword spam) and the exaggerated display of advertising.