Backlinks in Footer - The good, the bad, the ugly.

[Deacyde]

I tried adding onto a question already listed, however that question stayed where it was and didn't go anywhere close to somewhere others would see it, since it was from 2012.

I have a competitor who is completely new, just popped onto the SERPs in December 2015. Now I've wondered how they jumped up so fast without really much in the way of user content.

Upon researching them, I saw they have 200 backlinks but 160 of them are from their parent company, and of all places coming from the footer of their parent company. So they get all of the pages of that domain, as backlinks.

Everything I've read has told me not to do this, it's going to harm the site bad if anything will discount the links.

I'm in no way interested in doing what they did, even if it resulted in page 1 ( which it has done for them ), since I believe that it's only a matter of time, and once that time comes, it won't be a 3 month recovery, it might be worse.

What do you all think?

My question or discussion is why hasn't this site been penalized yet, will they be penalized and if not, why wouldn't they be?

**What is the good, bad and ugly of backlinks in the footer: **

1. Good
2. Bad
3. Ugly

[RyanPurkey]

Here's my take.  Some footer bests aren't necessarily links.

**What is the good, bad and ugly of backlinks in the footer: **

1. Good: Links are like a mini sitemap. Footer is a very useful addition to the page above it. Features heavily used features of the site that benefit the page by being available in the footer as well.  NAP. Anti-Spam. If links are external, they're to parent or partner companies within the same overall company.
2. Bad: Spammy. Tries to link to every page on the site with keyword heavy text. Broken links. Obvious paid links to external sites.
3. **Ugly: **Low utility. Never updated. Service provider links.

[GlobeRunner]

There are plenty of very large sites doing this--it's natural for them to link to the sites that they own. It all really comes down to the sites' link profiles, and if their link profile is diversified enough. If those links are the only links (or a large portion of) the links that they have, there might be an issue. But if the parent site is trusted enough, has a high enough Domain Authority, then most likely the site won't be penalized for the parent site linking to them.