Can PR0 backlinks be harmful?

[craven22]

Having a discussion on someone with whether or not PR0 backlinks can be harmful.

Managed to find these blog posts that support my argument;

http://geoland.org/2011/02/can-bad-links-hurt-your-google-rankings/

http://www.johnmcelborough.com/bad-links-good-site

My argument: Things like article spinning and distribution are pretty much pointless. I used UniqueArticleWizard for a while when I first started out with SEO. It gave me around 1000 PR0 backlinks. A few weeks later my site was penalised from PR5 to PR2.

Thanks

[TellThemEverything]

I think this was more due to the bad link profile you created, not the PR numbers per se.

[Dan-Petrovic]

Google updates public PR rarely these days... you could have a good site with PR0 for months so not a very good way to judge the risk or benefit that way. In fact if you have a history of buying links with same anchor text from high PR sites over a period of time you could trigger a penalty more so then with crappy little low quality links.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Spinning and article distribution are not necessarily anything to do with a PR0 site. What you were doing was not what is considered an ethical practice, and I am not surprised you were penalised.

PR0 sites can have good content and can be worthy of links back, but you want niche sites related to yours, not random ones that take spun content.

Regards,

Andy