Having a link from a foreign site

[ScottBaxterWW]

I just ran an OSE on a competitor of ours that they have a few links from this website, http://www.tz-online.de/ would this not damage there site?

[Devin_Anderson]

Nope.

Google won't penalise a site because of links pointing to it. A webmaster has little to no control over inbound links and so your competitor can't be held responsible for random german sites linking to it.

In general I believe local links > foreign links, but all things equal there's nothing wrong with links from other countries.

Worst case scenario Google can devalue spammy links, but they won't remove a site from their index simply because a lot of spammy websites are pointing to it.

[Aran_Smithson]

If you had 1000 links coming from a russian porn site, then you may get penalised as it doesn't appear to be a natural link profile.

However one or two links from foreign sites is not a bad thing. If your site is being discussed/linked too in other countries then it should be a sign that its good if not great!

[AlanMosley]

You should be ok. if the site is in anyway relevant, it does not matter that it is in a different location.