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Google says it won't penalize sites for old outbound links that now point to shady content

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TLDR

John Mueller confirmed Google won't penalize a site for old outbound links that point to content that has since become low-quality or malicious.

Optimixed Overview

Optimixed's original report on this story.

In a statement, Google's John Mueller clarified that Google will not penalize a website for maintaining old outbound links to sites that previously hosted legitimate content but have since changed ownership and now serve shady material. Mueller acknowledged the instability of the web landscape in his response, indicating that link penalties are tied to the intent and context at the time of linking rather than to the current state of the linked destination.

Topics:SEO News & Algorithm Updates
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