Cant Afford Link Removal Charges - Thoughts?

[ErnestHemingway]

Hey Guys,

I have been sending link removal requests for one of our health sites and so far on average every directory wants $20 to remove our link.

Some even want $500 to remove the link.

Now we went over the links that want money to be removed and its close to $12210.

How can I work around this?

The amount is rather very significant. Anyone in similar situation and any work around?

[arieng]

Maybe I'm missing something, but leaving a link on your site when the recipient has asked to have it removed seems like a poor business choice to me. Forget disavow. Since they ultimately have control over what is served on the linked page (and can provide a negative experience by serving poor content or redirecting somewhere else), continuing to post that link is leaving the potential for a poor user experience floating along out there.

If we're talking about a directory whose entire business model was selling links, then charging for removal might be ok. However, if we're talking about a real site with real users that is going to be an ongoing concern, then just invest the time to remove the links in the interest of quality. $0.02.

[Stevo]

So if things are so bad on the internet now compared to the past my question is who is making money now? Is is just Amazon and Ebay...have all the mom and pop sites gone bust?

[netmeg]

Nope.

[CainIV]

where there's money to be made...

[cyc0]

I realise this is an old thread, apologies for bumping it. Over the last 15 years, forum spammers have cost me 1,000's of hours of unpaid work. Now it seems the same companies who employed them are wanting their links removed. Why the hell shouldn't we charge? I've taken a black and white approach and they can either pay for me to work for them or not - isn't this how the world works?

[CainIV]

I simply explain to them what is going on and what is going to happen, as martinibuster mentioned it.

"Look, I am having to remove a lot of links, and for the ones that I cannot remove, they will be disavowed, and likely will be looked at someone scarier than I"

[Planet13]

However, John Mueller said that google will not punish directory sites (or any sites) that are listed often in disavow files.

so you should not let the thread of being listed in a disavow file force you to work for free.

I would instead see if there is a way to change your site so that owners of the directory listings can login and modify / update their listings themselves (including their links) for a small fee (like $5 or whatever).

[hurricane sh]

Someone offered $10 to have his link removed from my directory, I did that and gave him my paypal, but he disappeared. Actually I always removed links quickly for free upon requests, but this dishonest email made me a lot less motivated to do so.

[CainIV]

Hi guys, I just finished a rather extensive and massive link removal for a new client, whom had what we deemed both unnatural and low quality links (they had a manual spam action for unnatural links in their account.

The first time we applied for reinclusion we were denied, but 14 days later and many, many hours and excel sheets later the action was revoked, and the low quality links that were demanding removal payment were disavowed and marked in the excel spreadsheet as such for Google to see.

Hope this helps.

[Planet13]

Hope this helps.

Indeed, it does!