Hi All, I've been looking at the link profile of one of my sites that was hit by penguin, and I have found some dodgey links on a particular site. In this case I actually did NOT have anything to do with these links being created which makes it more frustrating. I think they have scraped google results and then created static pages from these - why you would I have no idea at all. You can see an example of one of his junk pages here: http://sitesamillion.com.au/hostelsinbrisbane.html (Scroll down to the bottom), and they clearly have 100's of these types of pages. I have politely asked the guy to remove the links, and he is trying to extort me for $XXX to do remove them, which I won't pay on principle. I've reported him to google from webmaster tools, but that can take a long time and multiple reports to be enacted. SO - does anyone have any more ideas of how to: A) Get him removed from Google or the negative impact of these crap links negated B) Something else to get his site taken offline. Thanks
Potentially block all traffic referred from his site in your .htaccess file. Google will hopefully pick up on this, it's just a theory though, so I don't know mate.
So you reported the guy that would not remove your links? Now you want to take out his site? lol It's not your job to police the internet for Google. If Google finds bad links, they should devalue them or deindex the domains that they reside on. Focus on creating quality links and creating quality content. Chances are those shit links are not harming you just as they are not doing you any good. Even good clean websites, with high quality/related backlinks have been hit by Penguin.
assphuck (btw nice name lol) I know it is not my job to police the Internet. In fact, it's only the second time I can think of that I've ever reported anything to Google, although like all of us I could have done so hundreds of times if I had wanted. I figure we are all just trying to have a go, and I always prefer to be positive rather than negative - push myself up not others down. BUT with a penalised site (from page one to between 50-250 for some terms, other no longer ranked at all), I need to look at my link profile and everything I can to get things right. Are there a few dodgey links i've created - sure. But in this case I had nothing to do with them. It's not the links I have a problem with, it's being blackmailed. I do not take well to being blackmailed.
I got a lot of request like this in one of my article submission sites. I got my account suspended several times until i remove the link. Problem with this kind of webmasters is that they submit their articles to your site through either tools or manually and then when somethings wrong they want us the owner to remove it. If we don't they report us to our hosting. Now question to webmasters like you, why do you think article submission sites has become harder to submit to? Why is that the successful submissions this days are too low?
Here is the HTACCESS code to block the referrer: Code: RewriteEngine on # Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} badsite\.com [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} anotherbadsite\.com RewriteRule .* - [F] My theory is, Googlebot will crawl that site, and try to follow the link, and realise it's blocked from there. It'll then crawl your site from somewhere else and notice it can still get through - effectively teaching it that you don't trust links from that domain, and it'll devalue the link to zero. Once again, just a theory.
Here's a post on SEOMoz. He talks about certain sites either not taking links down or not responding, but showing Google that he at least made an effort to remove them. They responded with a manual action. http://www.seomoz.org/q/does-anyone-have-any-suggestions-on-removing-spammy-links Hope it helps. ~englandrm
Have you considered suing Google for the loss of money/time after they targeted your domain in responses to webmasters? I've seen a number of failed reconsideration requests, but yet none of my domains were mentioned. Should one of my domains be mentioned, I will sue Google in small claims court where no attorneys are allowed under law. Let Google fly out someone to defend themselves against a $200 lawsuit.
Axedbydax - Did you even LOOK at the site I mentioned? Your comment makes no sense and I take offense at your "webmasters like me" comment - clearly you assumed, which has made an ass of you. It is NOT an article site, it is a site of scraped Google search results, turned into a static site. I do not know what the purpose of it is but that's what it is. If I had created the links manually or otherwise, I could accept what you say. But I had nothing to do with these links. I actually think the guy's business model is based around blackmail, hence why i'm pissed off.
Think about it this way. Australia is a free country. Freedom of speech, you know. Basic constitutional right. This guy can publish whatever he wants on his site. There's no defamation or copyright infringement there. The fact that it affects your site is your and Google's problem. Does it fair that Google punishes you for the content of some third party website you don't control? I don't know. Go and complain to Google.
Since you already reported the guy to Google, did you give Google the follow-up message from the site owner requesting payment. Not that I agree with reporting the site owner in the first place. But since you stooped to that level you may as well follow up and show Google the site owner is requesting payment. Maybe that would be enough for Google to null those backlinks manually for you. I can understand an article directory owner, like the one that posted above, wanting to be compensated for their time. I'm sure they get many requests and that takes away their time to do other things. Google should not be so blatant and force webmasters to do the work. If Google is so great, they should simply devalue the links or deindex the sites that they appear on.
assphuck - I would totally agree with you IF this was an article directory I had submitted to (or someone had on my behalf), or any form of site I had submitted to. But I did not, the content is scraped search results. I would also not have posted if he had said, no problems, but he needed say $30 or $40 or something for his time to remove them, I may have paid simply as it's easier and time is money. But to ask for several hundred dollars to remove a handful of links to me is extortion. Value is in the eye of the purchaser, but I don't see how you can defend this guy. As for stooped low - well, he stooped far, far lower if you ask me. But to each their own. What would you have done if you wanted them removed - paid up at any figure?
I am the webmaster of that site and the page in question is simply a page of useful links. Evil stuff. I told that guy sure, I will remove the link but I dont work for free. So, I told him, give me twenty bucks- per link (for the 15 mins it will take me to do the job for each link) and it will be down within 24 hours. So its not the principle after all, its the money.
With penguin, you worry when your whole link profile is bad SEO. One link will not hurt you. Just keep building diversity and more anchor texts and you will be fine. I would not stress too much.
15 minutes per link removal? Oh please..that's nonsense. It takes 15 seconds at most to remove each link.
It has a lot of manual work involved and sometimes you need to work closely with Google Webmaster tools by telling them you are genuinely interested in removing the bad links by showing them factual proofs of work like emails sent out, links removed by your manual efforts and an excel with links where webmasters are not removing links or threatening you etc, all needs to be sent to them as proof. Most penalty is lifted by manual spam revocation by the web spam team and its mostly a manual task from the Google webspam team, at least from what we have experienced so far. Its not an automated process, so just a Google disAvow wont simply work, You need to show them that you took real efforts to remove those links. In your case you can also attach the ransom email you got. Also try to email the web hosting company which hosts his website, most reputed web hosts don't allow web spam sites. We have done this for lot of our clients and taken like 1000s of links down in one go from 1 hoster. Hope this helps.
