Offered money for removal of link

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OP
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Well I've done a bit more digging and looked into the portfolio of the guy who emailed me. He hasn't replied to my response yet, but I'm pretty sure on the exact link he wants removed. Although I'm a little confused as to why. I've mentioned the said company with high regard, and directly linked to their homepage. You would have thought this would be a good thing, no?

By the looks of it, the person who emailed me deals with search engine optimisation for said company. Still confused. Will have to wait and see I guess!
 
Soldato
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Although I'm a little confused as to why. I've mentioned the said company with high regard, and directly linked to their homepage. You would have thought this would be a good thing, no?

Well I would assume whoever contacted you is representing someone who is in competition with the company you praised. Pretty slimy way to do business.
 

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Well I would assume whoever contacted you is representing someone who is in competition with the company you praised. Pretty slimy way to do business.

Which would make sense, except that the company to which I am linking is the one in this guy's client portfolio - not a competitor. :confused:
 
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If he's doing SEO for them, then he has probably been tasked with making the company be a familiar result for a phrase or combination of keywords. If your link is associating their site with other words and phrases, they could be preventing them from achieving this goal.

Is it daft? Yes. Is it actually going to undermine their efforts to gain rankings? Probably.

But I bet it's because they are trying to get results for a very specific set of keywords and your site is associating their site with words not in that subset.
 
Soldato
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If he's doing SEO for them, then he has probably been tasked with making the company be a familiar result for a phrase or combination of keywords. If your link is associating their site with other words and phrases, they could be preventing them from achieving this goal.

Is it daft? Yes. Is it actually going to undermine their efforts to gain rankings? Probably.

But I bet it's because they are trying to get results for a very specific set of keywords and your site is associating their site with words not in that subset.

Interesting post. Certainly makes sense.
 
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My thinking is they are probably looking to simply get my attention with the offer of payment with a view to getting the issue resolved quickly. If it is a corporation, a trivial payment isn't going to really be much hassle.

My thinking is this is a little nieve of you tbh
 
Caporegime
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Someone offering money for no good reason =scam, why would they not just ouright ask you rather than sending the first message offering money straight away?

Maybe they just want your bank details?

how can they scam him exactly when, if they want a link removed, he can easily put it back if they don't pay

bank details? bit silly - what are they going to do with that, make a payment to a charity on his behalf? Which he'd then report as being fraudulent...

It just sounds like you're jumping to conclusions, something you don't understand the motivation behind, you conclude = scam
 
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Seen lots of these recently, most due to Google clamping down on spammy links from link farms and so on. Some e-mails are nice, some not so, and some threaten lawsuits! This one (offering payment) is a new twist though.
 
Associate
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Tim80bwi - just how professional looking is your site?

I really don't mean to be rude but if I owned the "Chip-cup-cafe" and had faded photos of various breakfasts, lunches etc stuck in my window and next to those I had a photo of The Hilton Hotel and recomended that people stayed there after their meal I might expect a visit from the hotel manager asking me to take down the hotel photo?

Just a thought.
 
Soldato
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Tim80bwi - just how professional looking is your site?

I really don't mean to be rude but if I owned the "Chip-cup-cafe" and had faded photos of various breakfasts, lunches etc stuck in my window and next to those I had a photo of The Hilton Hotel and recomended that people stayed there after their meal I might expect a visit from the hotel manager asking me to take down the hotel photo?

Just a thought.

Click on his sig. I'm not sure if that's the site in question, but it looks like a standard blog.
 
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Maybe related to the Google Penguin update - lots of sites that dropped in rankings following this update have started requesting link removals for SEO purposes, as Google were punishing sites with 'over-optimised' inbound link profiles.
 

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He declined the offer and is now swimming with the fishes. :p

:D

For someone who was trying to get me to remove the link sharpish, he hasn't half taken a while to reply! I gave him a nice, concise response on Friday, but haven't heard a thing. Then again, perhaps he only gets back to work tomorrow?

Not really a bother to be honest. He's probably gonna offer me 20 quid or something :p

Tim80bwi - just how professional looking is your site?

I really don't mean to be rude but if I owned the "Chip-cup-cafe" and had faded photos of various breakfasts, lunches etc stuck in my window and next to those I had a photo of The Hilton Hotel and recomended that people stayed there after their meal I might expect a visit from the hotel manager asking me to take down the hotel photo?

Just a thought.

It's a fair point mate. But then again, I represent a key part of their target market, as do a significant number of my readers. So I'd be surprised if that was the thinking behind this. And personally, I don't think the website is too shabby either :p
 
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