Google must be having an effect...

...on those websites that have been trying to get backlinks.

I came home to find an email from a website that did a pet infographic I featured on my blog 2 years ago. This guy emailed me last summer to ask me to update the anchor text in the embed code. Now he emails to tell me they've decided to make some changes to their website and remove some of the content including the infographic so I could either host the graphic on my site or I might want to remove the post since the image link would be broken. I removed the post. I can only imagine their Google rankings have been going down since one of the updates and their trying to get it back.

Maybe this means some of the crazy guest posting requests from people working for companies that have nothing to do with pets will stop.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Amy Shojai, CABC on February 25, 2013 at 4:27pm

I've had a couple of folks email me and request that I remove their link from my blog.

Permalink Reply by Colby Morita on February 25, 2013 at 7:08pm

That's interesting to hear. I'm surprised their trying to get rid of a back link from your site since your blog is legit.

Google sent me an email through webmaster tools a while back warning me of unnatural linking and changed my PR from 4 to 0. I sent them an email asking what was going on. they emailed back 2 weeks later saying that after manually reviewing my site everything was fine and they reinstated my PR.

It was kind of a weird situation, but I had read that Google sent the same email out to millions of websites last year. Scary, but I'm glad everything went back to normal. The only thing I could think of that brought up a red flag was that I submitted my site to about a dozen or so different directories at one point years ago and some of them may now be considered spammy in Google's eyes.

Permalink Reply by Amy Shojai, CABC on February 25, 2013 at 7:13pm

The note I got was from an online university and I'd mentioned them one time in a roundup of links (I do every Monday) about some class they had. They'd been reviewed by somebody--maybe got a google letter or something--and had done a search to find all mentions, and I suspect just sent that same note to everyone.

Permalink Reply by Jennifer Costello on February 25, 2013 at 8:26pm

I've received 2 similar emails over the last 2 days asking me to remove links.

Permalink Reply by Kimberly Gauthier on February 25, 2013 at 9:54pm

I haven't received any emails, but I'll be looking out. This is going to be an interesting development. I created a draft email to send back to people who are emailing me about submitting a sponsored post. If they can't meet the criteria, then they can't be on my site - one of the criteria is that they be a pet related business (no shock collars, no dog breeding).