Link Removals – You’re At Risk
We have recently been doing one of many link clean-ups that come along with new clients, where we analyse the client's backlink profile and follow that up with link removal requests that we have agreed upon with the client; so basically finding all the problem links and attempting to get them removed.
We try to mix things up here so we can evolve our way of doing things and run tests to ensure we are being as efficient as possible, one such way recently was to use a throw-away Gmail account for the removal-request email blasts, simply stating that we were working on behalf of the client and we'd like the link removed – nothing more, to see what the response rate would be like. From our initial attempt we sorted the responses into folders for further action, here's the breakdown:
More Action Needed:
53% of the replies ended up in this folder and the overwhelming majority were due to the emails bouncing back.
Payment Requested:
4% were requesting payments, this ranged from $2 to $2,000. Some of these were also responses telling us about a company they were using for their removals – looking into this it appeared to be an affiliate scheme where they gave a directory (or whatever) a kick-back for allowing them to remove the link for them but charging us for the pleasure.
Client Needed:
Shockingly only 4% of replies were asking for the client to verify that the request was genuine by sending a follow-up from a company email address.
Removed:
Last but not least, 39% of replies were successful removals, no questions asked.
On the surface this may look like a successful start with the majority of emails needing little more action then simply finding new contact details or trying the email address again. Really you should be feeling very vulnerable!
39% removed the links no questions asked with the majority of responses simply replying "Done".
39% REMOVED THE LINKS NO QUESTIONS ASKED – FROM A GMAIL ACCOUNT!!
This is nothing short of alarming; a quick download of ahrefs, MSE or OSE, a fake Gmail account and you're good to go. This is where I’d like to be able to tell you some sure-fire way of protecting yourself but sadly there isn’t really one, how could there be? As long as links hold as much authoritative weight as they do you’re at risk, all I can say is if you have a website and you get a removal request, double check it and ensure it is coming from the company and hopefully someone else will do you the same courtesy.
The silver-lining if you are trying to recover from a link penalty, is that links are relatively easy to get removed, depending on their type. A branded email address will have an even greater success rate for your removal attempts but as we have found out, any email will do!
The fact that I’m seeing people still comment spamming tells me this will become a popular ‘tactic' among some circles to take out the competition, if it isn’t already. As there was such a high success rate I'm willing to bet it wouldn’t be too difficult to have links simply changed to another domain – We'll leave that test for someone else I think.
24 Comments
Abdi Mohammed - https://twitter.com/abdimohammed
Very interesting…so it’s no longer good enough to simply worry about Negative SEO (others blasting spam links at your site) you have to also worry about others setting about to remove your good links also. I think SEOers / site owners will have to scrutinise their backlinks regularly, just as often as Analytics and SERPs…
Craig Addyman
The issue is when you have a site with thousands of backlinks. It’s probably not too difficult to figure out whats gone on but then you have to try explain what’s happened and get it put back without annoying the webmaster and depending on the number of links you have it would likely become a full time job even with link monitoring scripts.
Abdi Mohammed - https://twitter.com/abdimohammed
Fair enough – so there is no real solution then? Although some would say this practice may only happen in very competitive niches.
Ralph du Plessis
It really does present the possibility of Google having shot themselves in the foot doesn’t it?
Through being relatively transparent compared to years one by and also providing the disavow tool, Google’s reliance on links could be blown right open which I would guess leads to the acceleration of authorship and social signals taking too spot.
Craig Addyman
You’d think so but I can’t see it happening anytime soon. I guess it also comes down to if this were to become a widely used tactic which I hope obviously never happens.
matthew hunt - http://www.SmallBusinessOnlineCoach.com
Man, this is a really good point. We’ve done quite a few link removal campaigns now for different accounts and we didn’t always have an email from that site and we had success getting links removed… but never thought of this as a negative SEO strategy. You are so right people will just remove links no questions asked. Man this is very dangerous. It takes very little effort to offshore this work for cheap. Scary scary stuff. Even it was only 10%, it’d still be alarming. But 39% is crazy talk…. especially if they were your best links. And usually your best ones are the ones that will get removed b/c the webmasters check their email.
Craig Addyman
Yea I think you are right, your more quality sites will have someone receiving the emails rather then old directories that are either on autopilot or just slowly decaying and yes your right, easily outsourced and easily automated (somewhat).
Rob Jenkins - http://www.20milesnorth.com
This statistic is a bit unnerving, but in my mind that is even more incentive to keep relationships active and bearing fruit for all parties. I think in the future sites should have some sort of link removal policy that includes a request from a company website email.
Cory Collins
Scary stuff man. That’s a pretty exploitable tactic, although it’s always better to build yourself up than tear down the competition. I could see a link tool that specifically tracked backlink portfolio changes doing quite well in the not too distant future.
TD - http://webmasterdragon.com
Craig, I know this was a test but have you ever asked the client for an email address on their own domain for validity reasons? Good lessons here.
Dan Thornton - http://www.thewayoftheweb.net
Isn’t this partly the result of so many companies going out and building links, or cold calling for business, using disposable email addresses?
As a blogger I get tonnes of anonymous emails requesting links, asking for link removals etc. It’s why as a business, we don’t do any link buying etc, and therefore can build honest relationships using our real business name, which may well be a benefit in the future!
Lars Skjoldby - http://www.mronline.dk
Interesting stuff. Wonder if the same stats goes with good editorial links. Anyway the value of just one editorial link is much greater than a lot of low quality directory links. Btw can you tell us how many links these statistics are based on?
Terry
Hi Craig,
Very thought provoking article. I am currently in the middle of a couple of link clean up campaigns myself and my responses are very reflective of yours. I was wonder though, of the emails you send out, what kind of overall response rate would you expect? That is, of the emails you send out, what percentage do you expect to get any kind of response from at all. Personally, my response rate thus far has been very low.
Terry
Hi Craig,
Some very interesting stats here. I am currently in the process of several link clean up campaigns myself and your numbers are very reflective of the type of responses I have received myself. I was wondering however, of the emails you send out, what rate of response have you found in general. That is, for the number of emails you send out, what percentage would you expect to get any kind of response from?
David Leonhardt - http://www.seo-writer.com
Google changed the game, big-time, and not for the better. Once upon a time, inbound links could not hurt you unless you were pretty obviously buying them en-masse. This made sense from a fairness perspective (my competition can’t hurt me by link-bombing me) but also just from an operational sense (Google chooses to include links in its algo, so Google chooses which links to include or not to include in its algo).
Now inbound links can hurt you big time, so you can be link bombed. And Google decides that some links are not good (for instance, too many sitewide links) and penalizes you for them (forcing you to remove good quality marketing if you want to regain your rankings, rather than just choosing to omit those links from their algorithm).
Now the side effect of so many people legitimately asking for link removals is that it is easy to remove the competitions good links. Honestly, if a site owner is bombarded with link removal requests, is he going to bother to check out each request? I know that some blog owners have just deleted all comments so as to avoid dealing with the requests one by one.
Google needs to stop penalizing people immediately for the links that point to their site. Google needs to take responsibility for its own algorithm, not make everybody else sculpt their links to suit Google’s taste (which actually runs against what Google tells us, that we should build links for people, not for search engines).
Gail Gardner - http://GrowMap.com
I totally agree with David. Google has created a nightmare for legitimate businesses. Of my three current primary clients, all three have been penalized by Penguin. None became my clients because they were penalized. All are legitimate businesses.
So instead of spending my time benefiting the world, I am wasting it managing the removal of links that Google should have just ignored. How many weeks will I waste only to have competitors link-bomb these businesses again?
If it takes two months to recover each time, and each time they lose 58+% of their traffic how long before these viable businesses employing many others go under courtesy of Google?
It is bad enough they take the converting phrases and hand them to big brands. Now they are actively killing them and handed competitors a way to help them out.
Jesse Teske
I believe it would be wise to invest in a tool that actively checks your links to make sure they are active. Raventools I believe does such a thing. But again, this is an added cost to small business owners that increases overhead.
@DavidRFrank
This has been happening forever but my bet would be Webmasters are being less careful the. they used to be in light of the disavow epademic. Craig based on your experience how much do you think this number has changed over time?
Paul
Now this is some coincidence but I just received the following mail from an SEO Agency that had the following to say:
“Hello,
(some unnecessary intro – removed)
I see that your site “—.net” can be optimized better to improve your rankings on Google. We have a unique and specialized SEO plan where:
i) we not only will help optimize your site and build proper links to your site
ii) we recognize certain loopholes in Google’s recent updates where we can request sites to remove links pointing to your competitor sites and thus bringing their rankings down – this is our unique specialty because with Google’s recent updates there are a lot of sites receiving link removal requests and it’s usually genuine well-managed sites that respond to remove any link requests. We’ve thereby successfully removed many links for other sites and we can do the same for you and bring your site up. This is a strategy that we’ve perfected over the last few months with some trial and error and it’s something that has definitely resulted in some solid results.
Our packages start from $299/month with a money back guarantee if we’re not able to improve your rankings or bring down rankings of some target sites.
I look forward to hearing from you. We have some interesting case studies to share, if interested.
Regards,
Kyle Mathews”
What you’ve suggested in this post seems to be a marketing pitch already for this particular agency. I believe it’s quite an unethical approach and was quite surprised at the openness with which he put forward his strategy. I found the mail particularly disconcerting and even tried to address this to Matt Cutts on his blog hoping for a response (till now the comment’s not approved so not sure if I’d get a response). But yes, what you’ve suggested is indeed scary and I just wish Google would make it clear and known to webmasters that removing links shouldn’t be done without some extra layer of owner verification. But of course, then the question arises of who’d bother with such verifications.
David - http://www.elite-strategies.com/blog
unfortunately this will probably give a lot of people some bad ideas
Tom
Exactly what I was thinking David, this is a really interesting article however I’m sure some people would have gotten ideas after reading this!
Andrea Moro - http://www.andreamoro.co.uk/
I second that. As soon as I started receiving email like the “done” before I immediately foresee a big opportunity for competitors to mine any content marketing and link building strategy.
Perhaps this article should be followed up with an educational one to inform webmasters only to accept link removal requests only when they have been received from a verified domain address?
Though, again changing the email header it would be extremely easier and likely to work if no SPF record is in place.
Vishy - http://g911rescue.com
39% positive link removal is an extremely high rate for link removal. We’re seeing numbers much lower than that.
Wojtek - http://WojtekTylus.com
39%? Wow! Very clever idea 😉