Google Rankings and Backlinks

[casinolatte]

Maybe this is a dumb question, but I was in google tools and it shows error from sites that are posting links to my pages that I had no idea about. Now if sites add your links to there site how does that effect your site and how do you get them removed? Specially when they are unwanted back links. I am so confused over this back link stuff because if you have no control over it why should your site be punished for it!. I hope this makes sense to someone.

[Doolally]

Google have said that they don't punish anyone over backlinks into their site. Whether or not that's true I'm not entirely sure, there seems to be a bit of controversy surrounding the statement but I think it makes sense.

[baldidiot]

Google have said that they don't punish anyone over backlinks into their site. Whether or not that's true I'm not entirely sure, there seems to be a bit of controversy surrounding the statement but I think it makes sense.

That was a while ago, it's pretty clear they've done an about turn since then... damn penguins.

By errors do you mean 404's?

[casinolatte]

I have been reading and reading and I tell you I feel more confused now. It says you want quality links from quality sites to improve your rankings and having bad neighbours will hurt you. But if you can not control this then what's the point. Number two My site has a pr 2 so if I want to get quality back links from higher pr's to improve my pr, how is this possible when sites with higher pr's don't want to exchange links with lower pr because this will hurt there pr.

[iGamingWriter]

Number two My site has a pr 2 so if I want to get quality back links from higher pr's to improve my pr, how is this possible when sites with higher pr's don't want to exchange links with lower pr because this will hurt there pr.

Lower PR doesn't me it hurts you or them. The links they're talking about being from a bad neighbourhood are from sites that google believes are selling links or doing something else dodgy.

[lots0]

I have been reading and reading and I tell you I feel more confused now. It says you want quality links from quality sites to improve your rankings and having bad neighbours will hurt you. But if you can not control this then what's the point. Number two My site has a pr 2 so if I want to get quality back links from higher pr's to improve my pr, how is this possible when sites with higher pr's don't want to exchange links with lower pr because this will hurt there pr.

PR (PageRank) that is publicly shown by google does not mean a damn thing as far as ranking goes, ignore it and you'll be better off in the long run.

Sites with high Ranking (note I did not say high PageRank) usually won't link out to newer, smaller and lower ranking sites because there is nothing good in it for them, they are not going to get a ranking boost for linking out... all the site is going to do is leak PageRank(the kind that really matters) and the outbound link could hurt their Ranking... I've seen one out bound link to a "bad neighborhood" kill a sites ranking across all their keyword sets in a couple of weeks.