WMT reports 81,317 unwanted new links from 1 website!

Never heard of the website, have never requested links!

[EarWig]

Today our WMT reports that we have suddenly obtained 81,317 links from website that we have neither heard of nor contacted.
We do not have any links to them.

Our website is music related, the site linking to us appears to be some sort of unfinished social networking site on a .co.uk domain.

There are no contact details except a gmail email address. (not compliant with current legislation, we will be reporting them)

We have emailed as follows:

======================
To whom it may concern

Our Google Webmaster Tools has suddenly shown over 81,000 links from your website at w w w.xxx

We have never dealt with you nor requested any links to our website.

You are ordered to REMOVE ALL AND ANY links from your website to our website immediately.

Failure to complete the above within 72 hours will result in legal action being taken.

You written confirmation that the above has been completed is required.
========================

The question is could this effect our Serps and how do we get this removed from WMT?

All input appreciated :)
Ray

[adder]

I would suggest the first email that goes out to them is written in a slightly nicer tone. I've found from my own experience in link removal that the majority of people comply when you ask politely (strictly but politely)...

The thing with .co.uk domains is that (thanks to British Govt.) anyone anywhere can register them. So, over the years, there's been a lot of abuse. You might be talking to some guy living million miles from you with a different culture and attitude.

Pissing him off simply makes your task of removing links more difficult. Besides, what legal action can you take, if say, I decide to link to your site? It's my choice :)

So yeah, try that first and then if there's no response, then follow up with a nastier message.

Just out of interest, have you checked what type of links are they? When you go to the detailed view of the link source in your WMT. It should show like "The XXX top links from Example.com"

To answer your question, theoretically, yes, it can affect your performance depending on what type of backlink profile you have. If you have like a dozen of links from low-authority sources and you suddenly get 80,000 links from a spammy site, then it may rise a few eyebrows, although this is unlikely. That's why I was asking about the kind of links you've had from that .co.uk website. Do they look like self-created manipulative links?

To remove them from WMT, you simply get the site to remove the links and then wait for a WMT refresh, which can take a long time to happen.

Do you know when the links were created? I mean, if you go to "Download latest links", do you see some links from that website?

[Rosalind]

You are ordered to REMOVE ALL AND ANY links from your website to our website immediately.

Failure to complete the above within 72 hours will result in legal action being taken.

Good grief. You'll catch more flies with honey.

[robzilla]

There's no legal basis for your "order" so your threats are empty, and likely to backfire. You cannot unsend this e-mail, obviously, but I would suggest you try to retain some sense of professionalism the next time around. Besides, isn't this simply how the the WWW works? You don't necessarily have to have 'dealt' with someone, or have requested links, to get links. I could have a million pages and link to you from every single one of them, and you couldn't do a thing about it (assuming all is legal) -- nor should you want to, really.

I see too many webmasters obsessing about 'unwanted' links since the arrival of these WMT messages and the disavowal tool (which you can, of course, just use to disavow the entire website). Otherwise I'd just ignore it, as I can't imagine it'll do much harm.

[EarWig]

Thank you for your help people, maybe I was a little hasty and over the top with my email to them, but it has gone now so cannot recall it.

When you go to the detailed view of the link source in your WMT. It should show like "The XXX top links from Example.com"

Cannot find any information on the above

I have also reviewed the site in question and cannot find ANY links to our website, so this is even stranger.

I have however found via WMT that the url in question now has /US/ after the .co.uk

I do find this rather odd and confusing.

[EarWig]

Do you know when the links were created? I mean, if you go to "Download latest links", do you see some links from that website?

Thanks for the help Adder

The links appeared a couple of days ago in WMT.

Not sure what you mean by "Download latest links"

Cheers