Getting banned / penalised from external links

Hi,

I know there are quite a few threads on this topic already, but I am looking for specific examples of cases where a site has been banned or penalised by building links using spam, e.g. forum spam / blog spam / millions of directory link spam

I was under the logical impression that you could NOT harm your rankings by external factors, or at least not get banned -- on the basis that you could build such links to competitors and get them banned.

But what do you guys say these days?

Can building loads of these links get you penalised / banned? or does it just reduce the positive effect these links have?

Any examples or opinions would be great.

Thanks

Mecca Bingo

Hi,

I have googled such terms as "mecca bingo spam" but found nothing which shows they got penalised for external link spam?

Do you have a link which demonstrates this?

Thanks

gocompare.com
moneysupermarket.com

Yea noticed that garry, also if your not careful a few of the other sites may go. Noticed alot of spammy urls etc

I don't get it, if they were banned by G then why are they still appearing in the listings?

They were banned for a month. Must have filed a reinclusion request and sorted out any spam etc.

But they can never filter out ALL right? So when a reinclusion is filed they can still see some spammy links... Also if they remove a lot of links their rankings should drop which didnt right??

the rankings disapeared for a while, but came back. They must have filled a reinclusion request. They are not back to where they were though.

what is Mecca Bingo? Never heard of it!~

They are on TV in the UK. Owned by ladbrokes i think.

ok, thanks

So, these sites got banned / penalised for external links? and not spam on their site?

Are you sure this is why they are banned?

If they got banned for this, what is to stop a competitor setting up some big *** forum spammer creating thousands of sig links and getting you banned?