Can backlinks hurt your site?
This is a tough question. Google does not rank spammy backlinks well and if that is all your site has linking to it than it won't be boosted up very well. However as a general rule of thumb backlinks will never hurt you significantly. A few spammy backlinks won't hurt you but if that is all your site has than you better believe that it will not be ranking high in any search engine. However I have noticed that non-Google search engines give higher value to spammy backlinks. One of my sites has 1000s of these spammy backlinks and is ranked #1 on Bing, while Google has it #3. Google has officially addressed this in Link schemes - Search Console Help . They list sites from these categories: Buying or selling links Excessive link exchanges Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links Using automated programs or services to create links to your site Requiring a link as part of a Terms of Service, contract, or similar arrang