Bad Neighbourhoods

If you care about your Page Rank, Google warns to stay away from 'bad neighbourhoods'.  Essentially what this means is don't link to websites that don't meet Google's Webmaster Guidelines.  Don't link to websites that spam, link farms or those hosting malware, trojans, viruses and other malicious content.  If in doubt before linking to a site check their PR.  A PR of 0 or more means Google has indexed them so they should be fine to link to.  A PR of NA can mean a variety of things from the site being relatively new to it being considered part of a sub-domain to it being in a bad neighbourhood to linking to a banned site..  If the PR comes up as NA use caution and check out the site well for anything that is contrary to Google's Webmaster Guidelines before linking to it.  If at some time you realize a site you linked to through a comment or otherwise is now considered to be a bad neighbour, remove the link immediately.

Be sure to check what a PR NA can be caused by.  If a site comes up as PR NA run a Google search of that site name.  If it shows up on the first page of the search the site is fine.  For example this blog has a PR NA but shows as third on page 1 of a search for "the blog report" meaning this blog hasn't been fully indexed yet aka I need to do a bit more pinging and likely promotion.  So don't discount a site because it has PR NA, simple check it over more carefully before adding a link to it.

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