Where is the best source to find bad links?

[agent10]

I have posted previously in other discussions regarding my trials in getting reincluded after a message in WMT in March.

My initial actions were that I immediately looked at any adverts and had these changed to include a no follow attribute. I also ensured that any other paid adverts were removed. I then also looked at the other links in WMT and contacted webmasters to remove links where we had not instigated at all.

So far I have had 4 re inclusion requests declined. Google in all fairness has responded to me personally and has also pointed out two bad links, one date stamped in a link directory as 2006 - certainly not added by us and needless to say no contact information even when trying the web host.

I am at my wits end as I have now spent weeks looking through our backlink profile on Majestic and WMT and simply asking for anything I think looks unnatural to be removed.

I have listed every url that I have asked to be removed and needless to say many I get no reply whatsoever.

My busines now 2 months in is being brought to its knees through third parties, how on earth can this be allowed to happen to a very legitate website that has been on page 1 for many years. I will spend months more on this if I need to, I cannot afford not to.

We are a well respected regulated insurance company in the UK.

So my question is - which I am sure others will relish the answer too, is, How do I find bad links, especially with our links in the thousands due to our 12 years of trading. Google keeps reiterating I have bad links to our website that Must be removed? I have listed also links which I have found on websites only via source code as fairly hidden, I have highlighted these to Google as again am unable to get the website owners to remove these.

In a normal situation I would be looking to take legal action from websites unwilling to remove these most unwanted links, but in this internet age, that is not going to happen!

Plus the question is who instigated the links being put on in the first place?

Any help would be greatly appreciated and hopefully comments or advise to this post will helps others too. Any other resources Please.

[agent10]

I just want to add since posting that I having now subscribed to Majestic and working backwards so to speak as in poorest quality first, I am noticing 100's, literally of listings on link exchange pages on very poor hotel, finance and travel websites. I can only presume these were added with their intention of a higher ranking website helping their own site, the old addage "link to more authorititive sites", will help your own rankings, as these pages look very old circa 2006 onwards as some are date stamped.

Therefore I am now going to work through these which will no doubt take me weeks. But awaiting further advice.

[errorsamac]

That's really disheartening to hear that long forgotten directory listing from 2006 (which you have no control over and told Google you have no control over) will still prevent you from being reincluded. What else are you supposed to do?

Has anyone been able to successfully have a site reincluded in the SERPs after receiving an unnatural link penalty?

[dstiles]

How can anyone remove links that they have no access to? It's a ludicrous situation.

Google knows this and does not care. They employ theoreticians, not webmasters.

If google had not pushed the idea of linking in the first place we would all have settled on appropriate and often reciprocal links rather than try to get millions of irrelevant links just to rank a site (which I refuse to do). Their linking system was always rubbish and bears no relationship to how the web SHOULD (and was designed to) work.

Solution: if google will not discount links that you have no control over and as a result kills your site then block googlebot from scraping your site. If everyone hit by all of the google zoo animals did that as well they MAY reconsider - but I doubt it until they lose too much data and get dropped by users in favour of another engine.