Risks in linking to a site that has a penalty?

[maximus12]

I searched the WebmasterWorld forums a bit but did not find a clear answer on how a webmaster should handle linking to penalized sites. We did some research on a site we want to link to but foind they have a penalty.

For example, if our widget website links to a site in the same industry that we know has a penalty (-50 P) could this affect our site in return? We would surely use the rel=nofollow but am still not sure if this is safe or not.

Reason being the site we wish to link to offers and attractive commission program, but we have been hesitant to link to it because of a penalty they have.

Hope to get everyones thoughts on this

[bwnbwn]

First a penalty (-50 P) isn't a penalty. It is more of a filter. A penalty is more harsh were the domain has been removed from the serps and can't be found even for domain search.

There is always some risk when linking to a site that has been filtered because you don't know what they flipped. Did they get caught buying links, have hidden text and so on.

Speaking for myself I wouldn't link to them.

[leadegroot]

Use the rel=nofollow.
Thats what its there for.

If you are still concerned, use an internal link that does a redirect to the desired external page and then put an entry in your robots.txt file so the bots won't crawl the internal link.

[maximus12]

Hmmmm I would have thought the rel=nofollow is enough but I am getting mixed opinions here. Does anyone else have any other thoughts?

[Simsi]

If it has content that is genuinely useful to your users, I'd link. A penalty isn't necessarily or even likely to be imposed for bad content (no idea if scraping is a factor though) so I don't see any reason why Google should mind.

[ecmedia]

I think there is a difference between a site with penalty (which a typical blogger would not even know while linking to a useful post) and a bad neighborhood (which is sometimes so obvious but many websites have good pages but run a nefarious website hidden deep inside).

[tedster]

there is a difference between a site with penalty... and a bad neighborhood

Right - exactly. And I know from experience it takes more than 1 or 2 bad neighborhood links to cause a site ranking troubles. When in doubt, use the rel=nofollow. As leadegroot said, "that's what it's there for."

[walkman]

Why take the chance?

[Rugles]

I agree, why take the chance. Six months from now if you get penalized you will be pulling your hair out trying to figure out why. Then you have to wait several weeks for the penalty to go away, if it does not go away then you have wasted time.

Its a real pain to figure out why your are being penalized and very time consuming.

[maximus12]

Good call guys. Although I really want to, I have decided "why take the risk"...