Link removal... are you doing it?

[dgswilson]

I've been blocking sites I don't want linking to me when I find them in GWT's. I've been doing this "just because" for some time. What effect does this have, search engine wise?

[SteveGerencser]

Steve,

One dumb question -

1) How do you know (or how do you find out) if a site is being penalized? (let alone how long it's been being penalized)

Thanks!

In this particular case? It went from #1 for hundreds of terms to not even ranking for it's own name. The harder part is figuring out if it's an algorithmic penalty that can be resolved pretty easily or a manual penalty that will make your life miserable. And no, Google will not tell you what it is in most cases.

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I've been blocking sites I don't want linking to me when I find them in GWT's. I've been doing this "just because" for some time. What effect does this have, search engine wise?

It depends. How are you blocking them? Google has said that serving a 404 is acceptable. We went one step further and serve a 403.

[dgswilson]

referrer 403'd via htaccess. I also figured this "might" get sites to remove them since it's not good having a bunch of broken links on a site.

[Buxykay]

I wouldn't be so enthusiastic about those link removals. Google sometimes tricks webmasters into whistle blowing. They say "If you can not remove the links, tell us where they are". A lot of webmasters then panic and tell but the after effects are very devastating for the webmaster as well as for others who have articles or posts from such sources if it happens to be an article directory or a blog which accepts posts through blog networks.

Why are the most popular blogs de-indexed? Whistle blowers of course.

I have been doing a lot of researches lately after reading what some webmasters are up to plus how Google tricks them into revealing their linking strategies in order to update their algorithms against such.

Google is a software, no matter how smart it may be yet it can not be smarter than humans.

I know some people may argue that Google has PHDs, Doctors of science in their team but who can emphatically say that they are the smartest guys on this planet?

As an illustration. In my country we had a hero who was so smart that even today people still make use of his philosophy. A man asked him "why are you the smartest?". His answer was "I am not the smartest. There are thousands of smarter people than I am but they are somewhere up in the mountains tending sheep because they never had the chances to show how intelligent they are."

[soquinn]

Unfortunately we've seen a few of these requests too now all of a sudden

A request in it's glory:

"It has come to our attention that the following page(s) on your website include a Search Engine Friendly (SEF) link to (thesite) . These pages contain either an excessive number of outbound links or duplicate content. In either case, these pages are in violation of Google’s current webmaster guidelines and have had a negative influence on our Google rankings.

As such, I respectfully request that our link(s) be removed from these pages. I realize my request may not be honored. However, Google has requested that I include a list of SPAMMY backlinks that I have attempted to have remove as part of my re-inclusion request. If our links are not removed from your site on or before 5pm EST Monday July 9, 2012, your pages and website would be part of that list and I will request via a DCMA report that these pages along with your domain be de-listed from Google’s index. For both our sakes, I believe it would be best to remove our link(s). In addition, the Terms Of Use on our website at the link below specifically prohibit any type of backlinks without our written permission and you were never given written permission (thesites termsofuse)"

Where is all this going? As a publisher of multiple sites we've received these requests but we too probably have bad backlinks to our properties and should re-send these out but how can you ever get all links removed and prevent future bad links? Seems insane to request all removals or expect them or honor requests in return?

[Brian Reynolds]

I agree with the last post about wasting time. I have made requests to multiple questionable sites and have had limited success. It will be good when Google allows us to unlink manually.

[C0ldf1re]

"... In addition, the Terms Of Use on our website at the link below specifically prohibit any type of backlinks without our written permission and you were never given written permission (thesites termsofuse)"...

Utter rubbish, from a legal point of view! (Mind you, that is only my opinion, and a Judge might disagree.)
Could you give me their website, please? I'll point a few links at them from Congealed Snake Oil -- that's a test site with spammy links that nobody could ever want! Then I'll email them to tell them I've done it just to provoke a lawsuit, to see whether a Judge agrees with me. I'll publish their reply on the forum.

[NetProwler]

Some times things don't work out as planned. One of our major clients had a break-in in one of their ad servers about 6 years ago. The hacker - probably from a former Soviet-bloc country sneaked in a script which churned out hundreds of links. The damage was arrested when the adserver was moved into our servers. But the referrals kept coming year after year. Search Engines dutifully requested the non-existent pages - apparently following some shady sites. Though the pages result in 404 errors all these years - we still see requests for these pages after so many years. As a site administrator we can only engineer 404/403 status codes for such requests. But it is not enough in such cases.

[ozsubasi]

I've been trying to get links removed but with very mixed results, ranging from removal within an hour to no response. The hardest ones are those I know nothing about, where there is no reply to emails and hosts say they can't help.

[kgun]

I agree with your point that google is recommending we try to remove our bad links. But according to me google only recommending to remove paid links or those links whose not according to google terms and conditions. But I have never remove any link my self

Does that mean that Google reccomend that you remove Google AdSense from your site?