I’m receiving an ever-increasing influx of emails asking me to link to Site X in exchange for a link from some crappy subpage of Site Y – a twist on the old reciprocal linking model. I must get about 50 of these every day. Today, however, I’m in a bad mood (and a little bored) so I replied to one of them inline. Enjoy.
Hi,
I came across your website and was wondering if you would consider a link exchange with me. In return I am willing to place a link to your site on our PR7 site here: http://www.scienceonstage.net/top-hits.html (I can put your link in the perfect category match for your site)
YAY another generic directory. Doesn’t look like spam at all – sign me up!
I understand that you probably get 100’s of spam emails everyday asking the same thing, but I am a real person and not a spam bot.
“I understand that you probably get 100’s of spam emails everyday asking the same thing. Here’s another.” <- fixed.
If this is of interest to you simply reply to this email and I will put your link live first. (Please send me your link details along with a short description of your site)
Title: SEO Services
URL: http://www.doneseo.com
Description: DONE! SEO Services is a leading Search Engine Optimization Company based in California, USA. Call us at 1-888-372-8335. Founded by Internet Entrepreneur Ben Padnos.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Kind regards
You have got to be joking.
Firstly, your “Science on Stage” site is a dropped domain you’ve picked up. Smart move – toolbar PR still shows 7 and you still have backlinks from CERN and the European Organisation for Astronomical Research from back in the days when it was a legit, useful website and not another piece-of-shit spam directory.
Secondly, you expect me to provide link to your SEO company and in return I get a link from some crap linkdump, sharing a page with about 200 others? No deal.
Thirdly, thanks for the personal touch – addressing your enquiry to root@ rather than the email@ address I have posted on my site. Now I know you’re not a bot, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
Keep wearing the ever-darkening grey hat.
Mathew
Irritating as this approach is and however questionable the ethics, it’s probable that – at least for now – this stuff passes under Google’s radar. Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, no recriprocal link, everyone’s happy. It’s not an obvious paid link for Google to investigate either, which is how many of us fear Google is investing it’s time.
I’m really interested to know if Google have anything in the works to combat this sort of spammy approach. I’m looking at you, Matt.
Tags: bots, reciprocal linking, seo, spam
This made me laff out loud.
This truly did make me laugh out loud. <=- fixed
keep the faith
^5
–bentrem
haaaaaaaaaahahaha!
Keep hitting the idiots with sticks Mathew!
Oh, and link me too.
The person got a Dropped PR7 domain… I think that is not possible without a bot… I too like “<- fixed”
This type of spam infuriates me. Not only do they ask you to link to crap, but they expect you to place the link first then they will reciprocate even though they are the ones spamming for link exchanges. To be honest link exchanging holds little link value and one way inbound links are much better to focus your efforts on.
I received this email too. I realised it must’ve been an expired domain. Although the home page has a valid PR7, this page http://www.scienceonstage.net/top-hits.html has a fake PR.
I didn’t get the difference between valid and fake PR… both the homepage and links page are showing PR7 on Google toolbar… do you mean to say Toolbar display can be modified?… I think this page used to have some value on old site and the person now holding it is exploting all such pages.
I’m intrigued by this. How on earth does somebody manage to fake PR. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, otherwise what’s the point of it? I get how they have bought a PR7 sites to use, before it drops off. But faking one!