About a month ago, I got a usual (and fairly generic) request from an SEO company (from a Gmail or Yahoo account) to remove a link pointing to example.com, with a request to notify person (at) example.com when removed.
I sent a message to person (at) example.com saying the link was already nofollowed and that requests for link removals must come from an e-mail associated with the domain. The mail bounced.
Last week I got a form letter from a lawyer representing example.com using somewhat threatening language demanding that we remove the link and that we contact someoneelse (at) example.com when the link was removed.
I sent a message to someoneelse (at) example.com saying we got their lawyer's threatening letter and pointing out, again, that the link was nofollowed.
This time I got a response with a lengthy explanation about what their new SEO company told them then need to do. I have never read so much misinformation about SEO in my life- a quick search on Google would dispel 90% of the crap they were told to do.
I told them as much, included a link to a Matt Cutts video thoroughly disputing the main points their SEO company raised, and let them know that they need not worry about the link because I removed it and that I will personally make sure that none of our web properties EVER link to their site in the future, even if they beg us to.
Today I received a bulk sent e-mail from someone (at) example.com saying that we probably received their attorney's letter, blah blah blah about them needing to follow Google's guidelines and that's why they have been contacting all the sites that link to them. Oh, and sorry, but the tools they were using were wrong and that our site may not actually be as bad as they made it out to be. So if we haven't removed the link to example.com, we don't have to. And if we did, would we consider putting it back? And just to let us know, they've written a nasty letter to Google complaining about the whole process.
Unfortunately, paraphrasing the letters really strips all the attitude out, which was pretty much that they are a victim because they hired a screwy SEO company that ended up getting their site penalized by Google and that we (site owners) are bad people because we linked to them and their lawyers are going to punish us and they're still a victim because they hired a new SEO company that ended up being worse than the first and nothing is their (example.com's) fault because Google is just a big bad ogre, boo hoo!
