Why This Website Owner Won’t Remove a Low Quality Link

Wow, I now have heard it all. Seriously. There are reasons why website owners will not remove a link from their low quality website to your website when asked, but this one really takes the cake. For a little background, I routinely help website owners clean up the links to their website as part of my Google Penguin Recovery services. Not only do I identify low quality and toxic links to websites, I help remove those links from the web.

In this case, here’s the email that I sent to this website owner. This was my 2nd email to this website owner:

From: XXXXXXXXXXXXX [mailto:XXXXXXXXXXXXX@XXXXXXXXXXXXX.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, 12 March 2014 8:09 AM
To: XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Subject: 2nd Request - Question about XXXXXXXXXXXXX.org

Hi XXXXXXXXXXXXX.org,

This is our second request. If we've reached the wrong website owner, please forward this to the site owner of XXXXXXXXXXXXX.org. Or, let us know we've reached the wrong person and we won't bother you again with this request.

Recently when we reviewed all of the links to XXXXXXXXXXXXX.com, we noticed that your website is linking to XXXXXXXXXXXXX.com on this page here:

http://www.XXXXXXXXXXXXX.org/XXXXXXXXXXXXX

I'm wondering if you would remove this link on your website to XXXXXXXXXXXXX.com?

Thank you, Bill (on behalf of XXXXXXXXXXXXX.com)

This website owner finally responded to my second email, here is what he said:

Subject:   	RE: 2nd Request - Question about XXXXXXXXXXXXX.org
From:   	"John XXXXX" 
Date:   	Wed, March 12, 2014 3:56 am
To:   	"'XXXXXXXXXXXXX'" 
Priority:   	Normal
Options:   	View Full Header | View Printable Version  | Download this as a file

Bill,  I would be glad to comply, the problem being that I can't log into wordpress for this site to do so.  Acquiring the site has been one of my notable disasters, as it has bugger-all to do with flowers, and the result of this mistake has been neglect, to the point, I believe, where Google has de-indexed it.   I would suggest that you contact Google. Explain this and ask for your own Google ranking not to be affected by the link.  The link was established by the previous owner and should have been removed when the advertising contract expired last year.   

Let me know it there is anything more I can do for you.

Regards, John

 

So, what this guy is saying is that he cannot or will not remove the link to the website because he does not have access to the WordPress site that he bought last year. If I paid money for a website, I certainly would want access to the website I owned. In fact, that’s no excuse whatsoever.

You can contact your web host and ask them to update the login. You can log into the site’s cpanel or web panel or use PHPMyAdmin to change the password on the site.

And how does this guy expect me to contact Google and explain this and ask them to not count the link when calculating rankings? Well, yes, there is a disavow that I will inevitably file for this site, but I don’t think John knows that.