Could link from banned site affect your ranking?

I recently canceled advert I had on a site that seem to be experiencing Google PR penalty (sites used to be PR5, its now PR0) but it seem not to have been penalized SERP wise as it still ranks quite well for the relevant keywords.
After the advert was canceled, my site's position on SERPs seem to improve, I wonder if this is coincidental or perhaps removing my link from the penalized site was the reason?

I would have thought that the only thing the site I had my advert on cannot pass on to me is PR, but because its not penalized ranking wise, the link to my site should have some positive effect on my site ranking and not the opposit.

Page rank is worthless... don't use that as anything to judge against.

My huge site with nearly 1million posts is a PR0
my stupid blog with like 10 entries across 5 years is a pr4.

it makes no sense at all.

Did your traffic change at all when the PR changed?

I've always said that off page links can only improve your SEO, not hurt it. Think of it this way, you have no control over who links to you (generally). If you had a competitor who wanted to hurt you, they could run your link on a few link farms.

To me Google would be stupid to identify and punish sites being linked to in this manner. The only thing that would happen is those inbound links would have no benefit, rather than a negative effect.

Google has access to all the data they need. They have metrics on the # of scraped links, or link farm links (sabotage?) to expect.

They can simply discount any value of links from specific spam sites, etc.

However, if your site has built up so many links that it surpasses the average threshold by a significant margin, *you* could be *penalized* directly, as it might indicate you are doing some unscrupulous link building strategies.

For example, back in the day you could run a bot that would post a linked message on a million different guestbooks and find yourself at the top of the web search results for hundreds of your top keywords.

Today - that will get likely get your site banned very quickly.

If your site is in every directory out there, has links on many different sites known for link exchanging or link sales, shows up in thousands of blog post comments, etc, then you're definitely asking for trouble.

If you have built links above the threshold (but not spam-level-excessive) from quality sites, to many different pages on your site, using a variety of different anchor text, with a low %-age of links in bad or poor neighborhoods, you should do very well.

Originally Posted by Noodles

I've always said that off page links can only improve your SEO, not hurt it. Think of it this way, you have no control over who links to you (generally). If you had a competitor who wanted to hurt you, they could run your link on a few link farms.

To me Google would be stupid to identify and punish sites being linked to in this manner. The only thing that would happen is those inbound links would have no benefit, rather than a negative effect.

Thanks for your contribution noodles, I think that answer is very innocent, but I think Google can detect a pattern which you will be blamed and penalized for whether you are responsible or now.

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

If your site is in every directory out there, has links on many different sites known for link exchanging or link sales, shows up in thousands of blog post comments, etc, then you're definitely asking for trouble.

Joe, thanks very much for your detailed response, I found what the cause of my problems could be in your response, I have been buying a lot of links and submitting to directories... need to review my strategy.

From everything I've read, I think Noodles hit the nail on the head.

Jason

Originally Posted by briansol

Page rank is worthless... don't use that as anything to judge against.

My huge site with nearly 1million posts is a PR0
my stupid blog with like 10 entries across 5 years is a pr4.

it makes no sense at all.

Aha , thats a cool advice

Page rank is the worthless piece of green bar which has no relationship with ranking of any website anywhere.

I am sure Google is trying to misguide users. The more misguided seo community becomes, the more profit they will make through their Adwords.

IGNORE PR, and only CONCENTRATE on ACTURAL SERPS.

I am sure you will be on top of all search engines, not only Google.

You never know if some new search engine takes over Google

Does anyone know how i can ban certain website links to be posted.

Originally Posted by briansol

Page rank is worthless... don't use that as anything to judge against.

My huge site with nearly 1million posts is a PR0
my stupid blog with like 10 entries across 5 years is a pr4.

it makes no sense at all.

Yeah I agree, my site with 2 posts has PR2.

PR is useless.

PR is not completely useless. Many sites require their affiliates / link partners to have a certain PR.

A link from a banned site or penalized site, most probably, won't affect your SERPs. If it does anyone can set up a site, get it banned and then link your site to take you down in the SERPs. So, No worries.