I'm so sick of getting "link exchange" email. Even funnier is when it comes to the admin address for the Yahoo! Search blog, like this one:
Dear Webmaster,
My name is Maria Foster, and I run the web site Web Development & Software Solutions:
http://www.clearpathtechnology.com/
I recently found your site http://www.ysearchblog.com and am very interested in exchanging links. I've gone ahead and posted a link to your site, on this page:
...
Of course, a nearly identical message typically comes in via my blog and a few other email addresses I have within minutes.
Fucking spammers. Get a life.
Posted by jzawodn at July 09, 2005 10:29 PM
The scary thing is that some people actually fall for this stuff...
I just started getting these last week, but I am getting them about every day now. I wrote an almost identical rant a couple of days ago.
I don't think they should die though; that would be to quick. ;)
I get a load of these as well. The silliest ones are those that say "we only link to sites that are highly relevant to our subject area" and then go on to say that they sell sleeping pills or something. Thankfully Thunderbird's Bayesian filter has pretty much worked out that they're all junk so they go straight to my Trash folder now, ready for deleting.
There must be a way to Googlebomb these link-exchange spammers by creating links to goatse with the link title as their FQDN or something. :-)
Actually, it's far worse than you think, and damn funny none the less.
Turns out a number of those link exchange farms are straight up bastards, displaying Your Link for only a few days (long enough for you to verify), swapping out your link when search engines come a'callin' or even being straight up about adding the NOFOLLOW attribute since they know 99% of mooks don't follow them. There was a running discussion about these low-lifes a while ago on WebmasterWorld.
The best thing to do is just ignore them.
Just do like I did. Reply to the email telling them how many visitors you get, the rate per visitor for providing their link and the total amount you'll charge them per month. Mine came out to $48,000 monthly. ;)
Worked like a charm...unless I just jinxed myself...
Sign up for AdBrite (allows others to place text ad links on your site for whatever fee you choose, Battelle uses them among others), they will provide you a link where advertisers can buy placement on your site, and then every message like that can be replied with "Dear Webmaster, we'd be happy to link to you, please use our standard link addition form. We accept any standard credit card".
I get these darn *&^%$#@! messages all the time because (I assume) www.komar.org has decent Page Rank as does your site. So my guess is they either keying off of domain PR or maybe SERP results (so it at least looks semi-targetted I guess) and then using your whois info to auto-send the request^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H spam.
What's more amusing, I Get it for a site that's a wiki. "well, why on earth are you asking me? oh, BECAUSE YOU NEVER VISITED THE SITE"
That's a good one!
By the way, what about genuine webmasters looking for links to a brand-new site they made? The sort that have really read your website and have a new website on the same topic (for real!), and are trying to get their first links. Most of these people get their first links through this method as they are not even showing up on the search engines at this stage...
The funny thing is that the blokes (the web address) you mentioned in your email are doing millions worth of business providing link building services to clients all over. Who are these people who subscribe to their spammy services? Going by the google ranks their website has, it seems to be working for them.
On the other hand, any SEO expert would tell us that such link building is just not worth the effort!
- confused one :-(
I get these all the time, especially for a site I run called FreeTrustSeal.com where they can build their own link instantly without spamming me. When I point that out a lot of them say they would prefer to have their link on the main page. Sure, why dont I put it in my sitemap too and maybe change the meta description and keywords to promote their site while I'm at it. ;-)
