Does inbound links affect ranking ?

[harry]

To get better rank in searchengine, inboundlinks are much helpful but i have read somewhere that some of them can damage your efforts.
Now how we can guess for such culprits and avoid such backlinks ?

I know there is no way to have control over the sites linking to you.

[Peter]

Matt Cutts has stated on his blog that some incoming links can hurt your website, for example, if they are part of a spammy link network. Also inbound links that are reciprocated can harm your ranking, IF the page that is linking to you has been penalized or banned by google.

[Alexis]

Not all incoming links are the same, some links are better than the others.

The Google Webmaster guidelines state that links from "bad neighborhoods" could be bad as they could cause your site to be considered as a part of that "bad neighborhood". In general, though, most links do not harm your site's rankings but to achieve optimum results and maximize relevance, the link should be from a relevant theme site.

[paul]

If you want quality links you should have original content not the bunch of affiliate links standing around your original content.