- Hello Webmaster
My name is Stella and I work for www.Studypool.com. We are trying to remove some backlinks to our website as we’ve recently gotten a manual penalty from Google. I would like to apologize for this inconvenience, and hopefully, you can help us remove these links.
Our site is linked on your website below:
http://hubski.com/user/websitetasker
Please let me know if you can help with this.
Thanks,
Stella
Actually, my reply was: "You put them there. You deserve it. Apologize for making the web a shittier place, and maybe we'll bother with removing your garbage."
Why do you believe websitetasker is Stella and not negative SEO?
True, but the spamming kind are not known for following best practices. I think the simplest explanation is that websitetasker is promoting their eponymous website. StudyPool, like Hubski, allows non-authenticated random people to create accounts, then gives them a customizable profile page with a unique URL. This free welcome mat is generous and subject to abuse. websitetasker has similar profile pages crammed with links at flightaware.com/user/websitetasker, cracked.com/members/websitetasker, flickr.com/people/166815399@N03, and elsewhere. Some of these sites, perhaps in response to friendly, apologetic requests from other people trying to make the web a nicer place, have removed the spammer's profile since Google's last crawl. When you see "For a good time call..." scrawled on a bathroom wall, it's possible that the phone number belongs to the vandal. But the best response is probably just to paint over it.
Stella seems like the kinda person that flicks lit cigarette butts out of her driver’s side window and then wants you to help her pay the fine for burning down the forest.
What is the thing happening here? Why would you make an account linking to many sites? What do you gain? Why is it a problem now?
It's to take advantage of the Google Site Rank algorithm. The more links you have to your site, the higher its search ranking. However, Google looks for people doing crap like this, and then penalizes them. As long as the spam links remain out there, they are penalized. It's poetic justice.