Google spam team John Mueller said that it can hurt your ranking both algorithmically and manually yes you have heard it right google can take manual action against your website.
So why google hates so much about these signature links?
Forum Link Building Easy: Forums are easy link providers you just have to sign up and add few post and you can link to any website with your desire anchor text, some of the forums are left abandon where you can insert as much link as you want soon these kind of abandon forums become target of spammers who fill these communities with useless junk post.
High PR Links Doesn't Matter: Some webmasters may argue that getting high links from high pr forums are still useful but john mueller said that "even from the most authority forums will not going to help you in seo" even from sites with .gov extension.
No Real Value: Have you seen some forums they contain links to some random website now the problem is that some are completely irrelevant to what the forum is all about like in dog forum someone is linking to their hardware store website.
Why Google should rethink about links on forums
Forum Nature: Forums are an active community of like minded people and they can link to some good resources which can be really based on their personal experiences now lets us look up an example discussion one person ask "i am fed with my dog behavior it's irritation can you please recommend some good dog trainers in florida" in reply to this, One person came out who actually had the same problem and he knows some good trainers which he has used himself and he added a link to that trainer website now as you can see the link like these cannot be called as a spam but it's a quality link which has been generated due to good experience from a quality service provider.
So if google brings up some algorithm which devalues forums links completely lots of legitimate website will also get affected due to this. Google has already devalued directory links so it might turn toward forum links this time.
Lots of Forums are highly Moderated: Even if forums have been abused a lot by link builders but there are well number of forums which are very strict toward spam even the slightest spam are being moderated by the sharp moderators. Only quality sites gets the link love so it's not good to say all forum are spam.
Right Method of Link Building
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