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I know we covered this topic countless times but just another reminder, Google prefers to "neutralize" bad links and neutralize spam as opposed to penalize you for those bad links or spam. That means that Google will ignore it, like it isn't there.
John Mueller was asked about a lot of bad links and how it might impact the site's ranking in Google. Here is that question:
I flabbergasted people still do and this and think that Google won’t penalize them for it.
— Zachary Wilson (@zwilson) June 24, 2021
Here is how John replied:
As to what would happen here, very likely our systems would just ignore those links since it's such an obvious pattern. In the meantime, this generally isn't something we'd count against the site where the links were dropped, if we can just neutralize the links automatically.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) June 24, 2021
Like I covered earlier this year, Google prefers to neutralize search spam. Ever since Penguin 4.0, we know Google preferred to ignore bad links versus penalize those bad links.
So don't fret too much about bad links unless you know you built them and paid for them yourself. Then get them removed and/or disavow them - but don't worry too much about it.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
