Google’s John Mueller was requested if Google would penalize a website for previous outbound hyperlinks to a website that after hosted high quality content material and now modified possession and hosts shady content material. John mentioned Google will not penalize such hyperlinks; he mentioned “no” and added, “the net is filled with turmoil.”
This was from a thread on Reddit that requested:
So the query is: how does Google deal with OLD backlinks to a REAL enterprise that sadly misplaced their area? Does Google penalize my lodging web site for linking to a site that not too long ago began serving shady content material?
John Mueller replied:
No. It is good to maintain issues contemporary total, however the internet is filled with turmoil. That mentioned & hopefully clearly, in case your complete website’s worth has change into out of date, that is a special type of drawback than a handful of damaged hyperlinks.
Google type of mentioned this quite a few occasions earlier than, that Google is sweet at ignoring hyperlink cruft. Hyperlink cruft are previous, spammy and irrelevant hyperlinks accrued by the positioning over time.
Google’s stance on hyperlinks, when you search this website, has been that it ignores hyperlinks relatively then demotes them, which has been its stance since 2016.
Here’s a screenshot of this (I cropped it to only embody the query and John’s response):
Discussion board dialogue at Reddit.
