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While I've seen a lot of news about Google cleaning up content farms, link farms, and similar spam, I've also seen some companies start ranking very well for niche terms using these same practices. Question: Does Google completely discount links from content farms and similar sites or simply give them low value? Observation: I've seen a company start ranking well (top 3) for several terms when they used be on page 2. When I looked at their links, they are from article farms, directories, do-follow blogs and similar low-vale sources.  Relative to others, they have about 10x the volume of links with the precise anchor text they are targeting. I wonder in absence of other information that these spammy links still count for something.  Given the low competition for the term, this is enough to boost their rank. Just thoughts some thoughts as we are working on long-tail strategies for some key terms.