Google penalizes sites that participate in links schemes with a PR0 penalty and refers to them as Bad Neighborhoods. They also penalize sites that inadvertantly link to a Bad Neighborhood with a reduction in Page Rank and a reduction in actual ranking. They recommend removing links to Bad Neigborhoods in order to recover rank.

I bring this up because earlier posts here revealed what appears to be a new Bad Neighborhood - many but not all sites of a popular template provider have had their Page Rank drop to 0. I am not trying to start a campaign here but am concerned for my own sites and my own client's sites.

*NOTE: The problem is not with sites being PR0 as many new sites have that - it is with sites that previously had Page Rank and have had it dropped to 0 as well as suffered ranking drops - that is what indicates a penalty.

Since other template sites have pioneered being involved in Bad Neighborhoods, it has been my experience that likely the sites that are not currently penalized will be eventually and that the penalties are usually permanent or extemely long term at best (even if PR recovers after begging Google - the rankings never do).

Links from those penalized sites are now worthless as far as helping my own sites ranking and the reciprocal links being provided back have the potential to actually cause damage.

Should I be ruthless and drop all links to the sites penalized? To all the sites by this provider whether penalized or not? Should I do notify the agents involved? Or should I do nothing for now?

What is your thoughts on this?

I just checked thru my Directory and found 38 links to websites by this company and only 6 of those are likely penalized - so I am not going to panic at this point. I think that there would be enough good links on a page that the odd link to a Bad Neighborhood will not cause me a penalty.

I will monitor the situation but will not do any link removal for now. I will certainly be on the lookout when I get new link requests though.

Still interested in your opinions about this situation though

Hi Doug,
You are a brave man I purged a few links on client sites the same day we discovered it. Sent a polite email inviting them to resubmit after they get things squared away but I can't risk the client sites getting zapped Not to metion I'd probably have a nervous breakdown...LOL

I hear yah Rich!

After a bit of thought - I don't think any of my clients have links to any agents with these sites. All links go through me and I don't think I approved any because they usually put the links on their other links page (not the link farm page) and that other links page never seems to be listed in Google.

The agents with the sites in question are listed in my directories though because they put those links on their main entry page - which does get listed in Google. So that would be my primary concern.

Doug,
My humble opinion would be to remove their link and inform them if they are penalized. No sense risking having your directories zapped for links that are more than likely of zero benefit to you ranking or traffic wise. Then again...I could be wrong

Doug, if my site is of concern, please let me know and I will remove the link. I know my page ranking is fairly low, if any at all at this point.

Your site seems fine Kassie. You just have low Page Rank because you have few links pointing at your site and also because isanexpert.com seems to be hording their Page Rank and not passing any on to you. You are not penalized though.

lol doug. i'm renaming it as soon as i get 20 bucks. i wish i could change it to my other website name, just the .com

Well, I thank you very much for this topic as I'm going through and checking my link partners...

and I don't like what I'm seeing. Some now have a PR0 when the Google cache says they were at PR2.

I'm guessing I should pull these babies pronto as I don't want to risk getting caught in a 'Bad Neighborhood'

Thanks again!

First you have to be careful, the google toolbar if you are using it is not reporting accurate data, with the hacking of the PR checksum, for some time now googles toolbar has been on the fritz. Another issue is if, you have one bad neighbor, it can cost you let alone 6. I personally would remove those real estate sites as they can and most likely will hurt your clients sites.