What is Bad Neighborhoods

[haseem]

Hi mats,
“Bad Neighborhoods” is how Google refers to questionable sites that constantly link to other harmful sites. While normally link exchanges are good idea, constantly linking to sites, no matter what their reputation, in order to boost traffic will quickly get a site in trouble.

[Steve Smith]

A "bad neighborhood" are sites like link farms and low quality directories that are very spammy. A link from one of those sites to your webpage can have a negative effect on your SEO instead of positive one. A lot of blackhat SEOs who are just trying to make a quick buck will have their clients linked from bad neighborhoods and charge for the backlinks.

[semaphore.v]

Bad neighborhoods can also refer to sites that exercise banned activities so these are usually regarded as bad sources of links by search engines like Google.