Suggestion for killing off bad inbound links

A directory service is causing link profile to look bad

[exposure]

A site was submitted to a directory service a year or two ago. The directory seems innocent enough on the surface, but it is placing our site/link in all kinds of random, irrelevant pages. I can't kill the directory listing since the operators are unresponsive.

Any suggestions for killing off any negative impact from the links on these random pages? Obviously can't kill the links themselves, per above.

I understand that the better option would be to get more contextually relevant links than bad links, but this directory is dynamically inserting my link onto multiple adult-related, foreign, etc pages per day. It's never ending and I don't have the manpower for organic link building activities to match it.

Maybe nothing I can do. Any thoughts?

[claus]

You could implement a script on your site which checks the "referrer" information from the visiting browser. If the visitor comes from one of their domains send them to an unknown URL, ie. a 404 Error page

You'll need a list of domains, though.

[exposure]

Thanks claus - I thought about redirecting, but my concern is more with how this looks to Google rather than with the inbound traffic (since there really is none).

I just don't want my website associated with adult topics. This directory is placing our links on pages that are totally irrelevant.

[edited by: tedster at 1:28 am (utc) on Sep. 23, 2009]

[Rosalind]

How do you determine that it's this one directory that's causing the problem? Even if you're seeing the same anchor text and description cropping up all over the place, could that have happened when a third party scraped the directory in question and copied its results all over the place? If that's the case then asking to get one link removed won't make much difference.

[exposure]

@Rosalind: the same anchor text and description is NOT cropping up all over the place.

The problem is that one site/directory is linking to my site on totally inappropriate adult pages.

[edited by: tedster at 1:26 am (utc) on Sep. 23, 2009]

[creative craig]

An indirect method would be to increase the amount of quality links - this way the overall % of bad links will go down.

Of course, this isnt you the quick fix you are probably looking for.

[exposure]

Thanks - but as I said:
I understand that the better option would be to get more contextually relevant links than bad links...

It's just that this is really a small site that can't generate enough links naturally to keep up with the exponential number of dynamically-generated bad links.

Not really looking for a quick fix. Any fix will do :)

[exposure]

Curious (still)... has anyone ever taken action against a directory such as reporting it to Search Engines as a bad/spam site?

I'm surprised no one has suggested this.
I'm strongly considering it.