Link Neighbourhood
Link neighbourhood is the group of sites a website links to and gets links from. Ties to trusted sites help credibility, while ties to spam networks can make a site look risky.
Link Neighbourhood Defined
Every website sits among other websites. Some link to it, and it links to others. Together, those surrounding sites form its link neighbourhood. The idea comes from the link graph, the network of links across the web. A site’s neighbourhood is the part of that graph closest to it.
The comparison to a real neighbourhood is useful. A house on a well-kept street with respected neighbours is judged differently from the same house in an area known for trouble. Search engines apply a similar logic. The company a website keeps through its links shapes how trustworthy it appears.
A neighbourhood has two sides. The inbound side is the set of sites linking to you. The outbound side is the set of sites you link to. Both matter, but in different ways. Inbound links show who vouches for you. Outbound links show who you vouch for.
Neighbourhoods also have layers. The sites directly linking to you form the closest layer. The sites linking to them form the next one. Trust and risk can travel through these layers, which is why a link from a site that is itself well connected to trusted sources carries more weight than a link from an isolated one.
The term often comes up in discussions of “bad neighbourhoods,” a phrase Google used in its older webmaster guidelines when it warned site owners against linking to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web.
Good vs Bad Neighbourhoods
A good link neighbourhood is made up of relevant, reputable sites that link to and from each other naturally. Think of a software company linked by industry publications, review sites, integration partners and respected blogs in its field, and linking out to credible sources, documentation and partners. Every connection makes sense.
Good neighbourhoods tend to share a few traits. The sites have real audiences and organic traffic. They cover related topics. Their content is original and maintained. Their outbound links are selective and editorial. Their own backlinks come from other trusted sources.
A bad neighbourhood is the opposite. It is made up of spam networks, link farms, hacked sites, thin affiliate pages, private blog networks and sites built only to sell links. Adult, gambling and pharmaceutical spam often cluster here. Sites in bad neighbourhoods link heavily to each other and to unrelated commercial pages, with little sign of genuine readers.
Most sites sit somewhere in between. They have mostly normal links plus some junk links they never asked for, which is common and usually harmless. The concern is when a large part of a site’s neighbourhood falls into the bad category, or when the site actively chooses to connect with it.
Relevance shapes neighbourhoods as much as quality. A site linked mostly by unrelated industries sits in a confusing neighbourhood, even if the linking sites are legitimate. Majestic’s Topical Trust Flow and Trust Flow try to capture both quality and topic, which makes them useful for judging neighbourhoods at a glance.
Effect on Trust
Neighbourhoods influence trust in both directions.
On the inbound side, links from a healthy neighbourhood pass trust and relevance. Links from a bad neighbourhood pass little or nothing. Google’s systems are designed to ignore most spammy links, so a few junk links from poor neighbourhoods rarely cause harm. Large numbers of them, especially when built deliberately through paid links or networks, can form part of a pattern that leads to links being discounted or, in serious cases, a manual action for unnatural links.
On the outbound side, the sites you link to reflect your editorial judgment. Linking to credible sources supports trust. Regularly linking to spammy or unrelated commercial sites, particularly in exchange for payment, signals that a site sells links or participates in link schemes. That can lead Google to discount all of the site’s outbound links, or to apply a manual action for unnatural links from the site.
Neighbourhood also affects the value of the links you earn. A link from a site sitting in a strong, relevant neighbourhood carries more weight than a link from a site with similar metrics surrounded by spam. When evaluating a link prospect, its neighbourhood tells you how much trust it has to pass on.
There is also a human side. Readers notice when a site links to dubious offers, and publishers notice when your profile is full of spam. A clean neighbourhood supports credibility with people as well as algorithms.
Checking a Site’s Neighbourhood
Checking a link neighbourhood is part of vetting any link prospect and part of auditing your own site.
Start with outbound links. Open several recent articles on the prospect site and look at what they link to. If links point mostly to relevant, credible sources, the outbound neighbourhood is healthy. If they point to casinos, payday loans, essay mills and unrelated affiliate sites, the site likely sells links widely.
Then check inbound links. Use Ahrefs, Semrush or Majestic to see who links to the site. Look for real publications and blogs in its field. Large numbers of links from thin, spammy or unrelated domains are a warning sign.
Compare quality and quantity metrics. A site with high link counts but low Trust Flow, or a high DR with very little organic traffic, may sit in a poor neighbourhood despite strong-looking numbers.
Look for network footprints. Groups of linking sites with identical designs, thin content and the same outbound linking habits often point to private networks or link farms. Those clusters are a common source of spammy links.
Audit your own neighbourhood regularly. Review new referring domains, check for clusters of toxic backlinks and keep an eye on the sites you link to, including old posts that may link to sites that have since turned spammy.
Act where needed. Remove or nofollow outbound links to sites that have gone bad. For harmful inbound links you built or bought, request removal and disavow what remains.
A link neighbourhood is the company your website keeps through its links. Earn links from relevant, trusted sites, link out only to sources you would stand behind, and check the neighbourhood of every prospect before you connect your site to it.