Cyrus posted a Twitter poll asking even without a manual Google penalty, bad/toxic/manipulative backlinks can (a) are 100% ignored, (b) can damage your rankings and (c) can’t hurt, might help!. The results said most people think it can damage your Google rankings.

The results breakdown was:

20% – Are 100% ignored
63% – Can damage your rankings
17% – Can’t hurt, might help

This does seem obvious but with Penguin devaluing vs demoting – you don’t have to worry about that link algorithm necessarily having a negative impact but there are other algorithms out there.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Note: This story was pre-written and scheduled to be posted now, I am currently offline for a holiday.