Are CPAN (perl modules distributed hosting) links bad?

[knowmad]

In the past, we contributed to CPAN and have a lot of links from mirror sites as a result. These are legitimate links but I'm wondering if they are holding us back. For those that aren't familiar, CPAN hosts code modules that are freely distributed for Perl programming. The code library is hosted on many mirror sites across the web in an effort to distribute the load of requests for modules when they're installed. The page that exists across multiple sites links a team member's name to our website.

For example, http://cpan.mirrors.uk2.net/authors/00whois.html, http://ukdebian.mirror.anlx.net/CPAN/authors/00whois.html and http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/cpan.perl.org/CPAN/modules/by-authors/00whois.html. Same content, different website.

Thoughts? Is it worth pursing or disavowing?

[knowmad]

Thanks, Andy. They've been around for a long time so I can't say they've created a drop. I'm more or less wondering if they could be holding us back. They show up in SEMRush as having spam scores that vary. I'm going to disavow the ones above 50 and see what happens. Probably not much but we'll see.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

If you haven't seen a drop because of this, then it means they are either being ignored by Google, or they are just not worth worrying about. Penguin has evolved and Google are now pretty good at just ignoring links that are 'crappy'.

There might come a point where too many of these does cause you problems though, so if they aren't doing anything either way, perhaps disavow the domain for peace of mind?

-Andy