Got Bad Incoming Links? Google Says, “Don’t Fret It”

Oct 19, 2009 at 9:27am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Google Webmaster Central blog has a post on “dealing” with low quality backlinks. In that post, Google basically explains that incoming links is “just one of many” ranking factors. That being the case, Google says if you have bad quality incoming links, “don’t fret” it and focus on things you can control, like your content.

Google does offer advice, such as asking the source of the link to remove your site from their page. If that doesn’t work, there is not much you can do. There is currently no tool in Webmaster Tools to communicate to Google to ignore certain links from sources on the Internet.

Google explains that over time they remove low quality sources from their index, so these links should not hurt you over time. Google recommends you report low quality sites in their spam report tool or paid link report.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

See more articles by Barry Schwartz >

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4 COMMENTS ON Got Bad Incoming Links? Google Says, “Don’t Fret It”

Michael Gray, October 19th, 2009 at 9:50 am ET:
Premium member since 01/2009

so you own some small mom & pop boutique selling dog & cat sweaters and if some bot net points 20K links to you in month it wont affect your ranking profile … cmon really they wanna go with that?

Ari, October 19th, 2009 at 12:40 pm ET:

If you guys believe this I can have 100k links hitting SEL, Cartoon Barry and Rusty Brick shortly, just let me know :-)

TallTroll, October 19th, 2009 at 12:46 pm ET:

Yeah, it’s like how committing a crime is just “one of many” factors determining whether you get slung in jail. The analogy is pretty exact

deltacubed, October 19th, 2009 at 1:29 pm ET:

Interesting article, and quite comforting! It would be good to be able to manage issues like this through Webmaster tools.

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