Will Google penalize sites with a certain news widget?

[CarPictures comm]

We tested a specific company's news widget for several weeks and it increased visitors to us by about 10%.

I'm concerned, though, that this is a "bad neighborhood" site and that Google will penalize us for using the widget.

I've researched the company extensively to find more information and opinion on the service, but can't find much.

Thanks in advance

[edited by: tedster at 8:48 pm (utc) on Feb 15, 2010]
[edit reason] remove specific company name [/edit]

[tedster]

Hello, and welcome to the forums.

When Google talks about "bad neighborhoods" they are speaking of sites that are involved in major manipulation of the rankings via link farms, parasite hosting, and sometimes malware distribution. If this news widget service were involved with that kind of thing, they would probably not even rank #1 for their own brand name - in fact, their entire domain would likely not be in the index. Of course, if you ever see those signs, then you should have second thoughts.

Are you concerned that you will be publishing links to news articles that might be hosted in bad neighborhoods? I would say that this is unlikely to affect you negatively. In fact, it is unlikely to happen at all, as long as the news widget service is doing their job well.

And since your test showed positive results, it sounds like they are. If your pages that ran that test are indexed by Google, then you already have a reason to put your concerns to rest.