Link Directories: Want Us To Remove Your Links? Pay Us

[snakeair]

FYI, I didn't write this but sharing this blog post for the link directory owners to discuss.

For the past year, Google has been sending out link penalty notifications for unnatural links pointing to your web site. Those notifications kicked up a notch earlier this year and since then – especially with the Penguin update, webmasters and SEOs have been obsessed with link removals.

Link Removal Fees:

With this, there are many out there trying to capitalize on this fear. A reader sent us an example of a directory with a special landing page specifically designed to collect money from webmasters in order to remove links from their site. The site offers you to pay them and in exchange, they will remove the links they have pointing to your web site from their site. Yes, people are charging others to remove links that they put up.

The site reads:

Continued at: http://searchengineland.com/link-dir...-pay-us-128237

Any thoughts on this directory owners?

[stoner3221]

I don't own a link directory just a couple of website directories but was probably the one who started the charge for removal by directories. People removing free organic website links listed in a long established directory since 2001 deserve to pay for such stupidity.
It also requires time to establish domain ownership since most requests come from supposed SEO companies you never hear from again when a $5 processing fee is requested.

[Brave7]

Originally Posted by stoner3221

I don't own a link directory just a couple of website directories but was probably the one who started the charge for removal by directories. People removing free organic website links listed in a long established directory since 2001 deserve to pay for such stupidity.
It also requires time to establish domain ownership since most requests come from supposed SEO companies you never hear from again when a $5 processing fee is requested.

[thekingofseo]

I think minor processing fee should be there otherwise people may misuse it plus it require effort to remove the links.

[Jim Gillum]

Gotta' agree on the charge...

They readily accepted the free links.....
Now the site owner must take time to remove them....
Pay up...
BTW...I do not own a directory......)))

[Dan]

The problem with the SE Land blog post, by Barry Schwartz is that if you trace it back to its beginnings it was Barry that created the brushfire concerning directories in the first place.

The timeline is something like this...

• Barry notices a moronic post on WMW where someone in a one line sentence (without any evidence, references, lists of directories or expertise) suggests 50% of directories are being de-indexed by Google.
• Barry runs around like a chook with its head cut off posting on all his authoritative SEO websites suggesting Google is de-indexing directories
• Barry's colleague Terry (and myself doing my own research off my own bat) discover that actually most good directories are indexed (Terry found 1.3% of the list he was using were de-indexed which was 1 out of the 65 he checked. All 100 on the list I maintain were indexed)
• Barry posts again, about that old chestnut give us the power to discount links in Google's WMT! Why? so he and his buds can make easy money with their link pruning, backlink profile tweaking SEO services!
• Barry writes his hypocritical post about directories charging to remove links, when he and his SEO buds charge their clients to do exactly the same thing. Link pruning (or whatever you want to call it) is an SEO service where a client pays an SEO to remove links on their behalf - How is this any different?

The sad thing about all this is that it is complete propaganda.

If the SEOs never yelled about the sky falling in regarding directories, so that they could create their link pruning services THEN directories would never have been put in the position of having to remove links. When mass hysteria is created and a good directory suddenly finds itself inundated with link removal requests, is the owner of that business then suddenly obliged to spend all their time removing links for free?

The content is owned by the directory owner. The directory owner is running a business. The directory owner has very little time. The directory owner didn't stir up this pathetic propaganda that has caused the problem.

The SEO did that. So the SEO should pay the consequences.

The reason Barry and his SEO buds are p!ssed is because when directories charge a fee to remove the link, that impacts on the bottom line that Barry is getting paid to remove the link for his client.

Got Hypocrite?

You reap what you sow Barry... You reap what you sow!

[Chabbs]

I have received request from companies and individuals asking for the removal of their listing. I haven't charged them even though I did receive an offer from a marketing company who had several listings in the directory that was willing to pay for the removal.

The directory has been around since 2003 and is well maintained. It's sad to see people reacting as they are, especially when their listings have been around for three or more years. I do understand their concern though since there is still much confusion for most site owners.

I won't be charging for any removal of listings. To each their own and if anyone can make more money from that service, congrats.

[freeadstime]

If your site is penalized for unnatural links, then you should do your best to remove as many unnatural links as you can to your site. For the directory or any other sites that are asking for money to have your link removed, you can report them to Google. This is requested by Google, they want to know what sites are abusing the system. So, once you are filling up the reconsideration submission form, mention that example.com directory site doesn't remove our links unless we pay them. Google is planning to penalize those directory sites severely after and they accept your reasoning for not having those links removed.

[Dan]

Originally Posted by Chabbs

I have received request from companies and individuals asking for the removal of their listing. I haven't charged them even though I did receive an offer from a marketing company who had several listings in the directory that was willing to pay for the removal.

My suggestion here would be to verify that the site owner is indeed requesting the removal first.

It could be a competitor site looking to remove a quality link (this is probably more prevalent than people looking to remove their own links)

The directory has been around since 2003 and is well maintained. It's sad to see people reacting as they are, especially when their listings have been around for three or more years. I do understand their concern though since there is still much confusion for most site owners.

If the directory is indeed well maintained, this smacks of competitor negative SEO. That's what they do. Go to the better links on their competitors list, and get them removed. Sounds simple? It is thanks to penguin!

I won't be charging for any removal of listings. To each their own and if anyone can make more money from that service, congrats.

Kudos to you. You can bet your bottom dollar that the SEO working for the client is charging to remove the links though

Originally Posted by freeadstime

If your site is penalized for unnatural links, then you should do your best to remove as many unnatural links as you can to your site. For the directory or any other sites that are asking for money to have your link removed, you can report them to Google. This is requested by Google, they want to know what sites are abusing the system. So, once you are filling up the reconsideration submission form, mention that example.com directory site doesn't remove our links unless we pay them. Google is planning to penalize those directory sites severely after and they accept your reasoning for not having those links removed.

Actually you've made quite a misleading statement, and I don't believe that a reasonable person would consider what you've said to be the complete truth of the situation at all.

If that were the case every single directory would potentially be on the chopping block. In fact, every single website on the web that has links would potentially be on the chopping block. That's propaganda talk. That's fear talk. That's chicken little "sky is falling in" talk. It's just not realistic.

What Google has communicated is the following:

In a few situations, we have heard about directories or blog networks that won’t take links down. If a website tries to charge you to put links up and to take links down, feel free to let us know about that, either in your reconsideration request or by mentioning it on our webmaster forum or in a separate spam report. We have taken action on several such sites, because they often turn out to be doing link spamming themselves.

I think if you read that as it is intended, they are referring to large networks of directories or blogs (i.e. owned/run/spammed by the same people) who are extorting money to remove links.

The fact that they refer to "charge you to put links up" shows how poor their communication with webmasters is, because Adwords is a service that charges people to put links on Google. So they would be guilty in perhaps the greatest magnitude on the web of the "charging to put links up" crime.

So yeah. Reasonable people read that quote the way it is intended. That spammy networks trying to extort people will get taken down, with people's help. Google isn't going to just kill a site because 5 people said they wouldn't remove a link. That's ridiculous.

[Dave-mmayh]

I think it's fair people have to pay for their removal. After all when putting these thousands of links they were trying to do nothing other than fool the engines, so now they have to pay for this

[Dan]

Originally Posted by Dave-mmayh

I think it's fair people have to pay for their removal. After all when putting these thousands of links they were trying to do nothing other than fool the engines, so now they have to pay for this

But what about in the situation where say I link to you, and you never asked me to link to you. That is the definition of a natural link. I liked your site, so I linked to it and/or recommend it.

People are requesting those sorts of links to be removed, and demanding the site owner to remove them... This is in direct conflict with the reason for penguin. --- There is a real world example of this from Danny Sullivan himself. A site owner requested their link be removed from Search Engine Lands, Searchcap update... it's a natural link, a powerful one, and the site owner requested removal. RIDICULOUS! INSANITY!

Penguin was designed to get spam. But what is happening is that Google has unwittingly (or wittingly) created a situation where people are requesting websites who have linked to them, where they didn't ask for the link, to remove that link.

Ummm. So what is happening, is that in their panic, webmasters are removing their own natural links. Ones they probably cannot get back, and which aren't hurting them but are helping them.

Don't remove links, unless you have intentionally spammed.

What makes the situation worse is that now Google has started this brushfire, and blind SEOs like Bazza have fanned the flames, what we've ended up with is an out of control bushfire that is threatening to consume large parts of the web.

Unscrupulous types, are using this out of control situation to cause as much damage as possible by getting rid of their competitors natural links. They don't even need to do "negative SEO" link building which may or may-not affect their competitors (I bet many of them still do this as an insurance policy for the future). They can just get their natural links removed through threats to sue and demands, without ever having to verify they are the genuine site owner.

[Cricket]

We talked about this a bit on the V7N blog.
http://blog.v7n.com/2012/07/17/blind-panic-over-links/

[Dr_Ace]

i had only one request for remove a link from my directory and i do not charge for that

if i had many link removal requests i may think to charge a small fee