I took a good site offline due to so many remove link emails

[bwnbwn]

We created an article website 8-9 years ago. It was allowed the author could post a link to their website or related page to the article. All the links from day 1 were nofollow. Since the recent updates from G we have been swamped with link removal request. I had a prepared email letting these newbees know the links were nofollow and had no effect on their problem. Well some of the (most of them) don't seem to understand this, so I took a look at the website and determined it was of no value to our company and our future.
The website did very well in the serps but with the content I had taken off adsense to protect our interest, so really there was no viable income.
Best option kill it. Shame but I just don't have the time to worry with all the emails and the website making the company 0.

[vik_c]

@goodoldweb @SevenCubed

Maybe you guys could have a point there. There has to be a viable alternative, however. At some point it seemed like Bing could take away some market share. Now I believe it may be shut down. Links and Google policies around it have been tedious for a while now.

[EditorialGuy]

Honestly, I miss web search as it was back in 2007-2008.

I miss Web search as it was back in 1993. :-)

[n0tSEO]

We're all a bit nostalgic here. ;-)

But apart from that, web search was simpler before; less 'tyrannical' or in favor of the big brands. At the current algorithmic change rate, we might see small websites and personal blogs be pushed out of the index.

Yes, perhaps that sounds a bit too much (even to my own ears), but Google's push on content quality is alarmingly aggressive--- see how backlinks from guest posts, infographics and even good websites like W3's are considered 'spam' (and they aren't). Changes are a good thing - they mean progress! - but not all changes are positive.

My point really is that it's up to the webmaster, eventually, to pick the guidelines they want to adhere to and ignore the rest. Might not make Google happy, but Google is part of the business strategy, not the strategy itself.

@EditorialGuy - Web search in 1993? Wish I had a chance see that. :) Too bad I was only 8 years old.

[P.S. I apologize for any low quality posts I may write; not a great time of the year health-wise]

[EditorialGuy]

But apart from that, web search was simpler before; less 'tyrannical' or in favor of the big brands. At the current algorithmic change rate, we might see small websites and personal blogs be pushed out of the index.

Or maybe not. For some of the informational searches that I do, "big brand" results from the likes of Wikipedia would be preferable to the junk I'm seeing. (And I'm not talking about spam--I'm talking about thin, low-quality pages that appear to be ranking well because of dumb luck, not because of SEO tricks.)

[n0tSEO]

EditorialGuy, could you define "thin, low-quality pages that appear to be ranking well because of dumb luck"? Just to see if we're thinking of the same kind of junk content.

[bwnbwn]

I took the website offline the 19th and still getting DA's sending link request removals. Just boggles my mind.

I have a prepared email for them.
name you are a complete DA. If you don't know the meaning look it up. I took the website offline on the 19th of November.
Next time look before you spam me again.

[EditorialGuy]

EditorialGuy, could you define "thin, low-quality pages that appear to be ranking well because of dumb luck"?

The most obvious example that I can think of is a small location-based EMD site whose home page consists of a photo taken of a transit map plus a few related links, an AdSense ad, and some affiliate links. There isn't much else to the site. I don't know what the owner's intentions originally were, but very little effort went into the site, and it's amazing that it ranks no. 2 for a fairly important search query. I can't think of anything except the location-based EMD that could have put it there.

[n0tSEO]

@bwnbwn - Good email, but why wasting your time to reply, anyway? Some of these emails are automated; they won't even look at your site to check if anything has changed and just send out several copies of the same email to a bunch of email addresses they collected (from Whois or cache or even Archive.org).

If you see a pattern in the subject titles or sender, just blacklist them and let your antispam folder do the job.

@EditorialGuy - Yes, that's the kind of website I was thinking of, too. Or sites that only show an Under Construction sign on the homepage and nothing else.