I have been sent an email that I think is spam but I am not sure
From: Link Removal [linkremoval@linkremovalhelp.com]
To: C5F26A2806DE406AA29F6F8C88B82FED.PROTECT@WHOISGUARD.COM
Subject: Uh Oh! Our Site Received a Google Penalty - Be Careful
Greetings Webmaster,
We have discovered that backlinks on your site have contributed to a Terms of Service violation issued to trainingaffiliateprogram.com by Google. We would ask that you remove the below backlinks as soon as possible:
http://inclusiveliving.net/the-top-keywords-website-is-jaaxy
http://inclusiveliving.net/what-is-my-online-business-empire-a-warning-to-the-wise
This will allow us to reestablish good terms with Google and once again comply with Google Webmaster, Google Penguin and Google Panda guidelines. These guidelines enable us to have a high search engine ranking, which is important to the visibility of our website.
Thanks for helping us out.
Can anyone give me a heads up on this? I could not get a clear idea from my own research on Google.
Thanks
Recent Comments
9
Whoisguard.com is a spam screening service. I would go to their site to determine if this from them or not. There are spoofs of this service. Also type whois in the question box above. There is some training available.
Be very careful. I looked linkremoval@linkremovalhelp.com up in Google and did a quick review of their FAQs. This is one of the things i found...
"How much do you charge for large link removal projects?
Our charges for the link removal, and penalty removal processes are $995 for the first 500 unique domains that need links removed from them. If you are not sure how many links/unique domains you need to have links removed from that's fine, we will manually analyze your link profile, and quote based on the exact number of low quality links we believe should be removed to get you out of trouble."
It appears they provide a "service" and charge you on the back-end?
Hope this helps and God Bless!
~Cathy
Thanks to both HoJo007 and mlpdap. I have requested more info from them. I also expressed my confusion over how my links have anything to do with trainingaffiliateprogram.com which is a completely different site that I do not own.
I will keep you informed.
It would be nice if they explained what makes these backlinks a violation. I would like to hear what happens. The bottom line is that they are only asking you to remove a couple backlinks, which shouldn't have too much of an impact on your site. I'm just curious as to why it is violation. I would write back to them, if possible to try and find out. If they respond trying to promote anything of any nature, you know it is BS. Good luck and all the best
From the looks of it and researching, I think it is real. You might want to read this.
http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2273059/link-removal-request-tips-for-webmasters-business-owners#
I actually found this on my own and found it very difficult to understand. Obviously there is a lot to learn here. The links being referred to are links I created to my own site and point to posts/pages on the same site. Seems innocent enough to me. I will have to study this.
Thanks for your help.
Wait, you're saying the links are just throughout your own website? I take back what I said previously then! :) You have done nothing that could be "hurting" anyone else. I think Howie makes a good point. Send them a reply and see what they come back with. It's getting harder and harder to know a spoof.
See more comments
Thank you to all those who have responded. I am going to ignore this unless I get another indication that something is wrong. I sent a return email to the group that sent me the message asking for more info and I received nothing.
My website does not reference trainingaffiliateprogram.com in any way that I could find. The only thing I noticed is that trainingaffiliateprogram.com promotes a product that I did a review on at one of the links mentioned and gave the product a SCAM rating. I don't know if this is the reason I received the original email or not.
I'll let you know if I hear anything else.