Reviewing a competitors links

[BrandonC-269887]

Using Open Site Explorer I was reviewing a sites links. This site happens to appear at position 2 in Google for a key-term that I am targeting for one of my sites. Most, if not all of the links appear to be coming from some very questionable sources that have absolutely nothing to do with their sites content or business. Some of the page titles are :

Free Music - Free Music

Tampa Bay Florida Fishing Guide

Free BDSM and Bondage Sex, BDSM XXX, Fetish Por...

LAX Car Rental

Reciprical Links Page - Add Your Link

Casino More Links

Is this practice going to end up hurting their site and catch up to them at some point? From what I have read, these are not the type of links that you want to be going after.

[seanmccauley]

There appears to be some difference of opinion on this matter. One thought is that yes, spammy link profiles could under manual review by Google result in your site being penalised, removed from the index. Others claim that the worst that can happen is that any link juice flowing from these sites would be removed. In this case were your competitor not to have links other than the type you point to then they would have a huge drop in traffic. Either way the result would be bad news.

[AlanBleiweiss]

and the good news is if you implement high quality content and focus on high quality links and social signals, you should eventually be able to overtake them. I've done it a number of times.  As frustrating as it is to deal with, it can be dealt with.