Somewhat true MIA. The main difference between a Pay for PRV juice type of ad campaign and a Directory listing campaign is simple really. Links at a high prv ranked site are good to help drive UP your main sites PRV ranking, but prv ranking does NOT get your business ranked higher in Google despite the various claims to the contrary in a real world manner. This is a simple thing to prove. Do a Google search for anything at all. You will see some high prv ranked listings of course, but you will also find on page one results MANY VERY LOW Prv ranked sites mixed right in the results on page 1. Consumers (your buyers) care not what your PRV ranking is. They only care about FINDING what they are looking for and if your page is NOT near the top page or two in Google your page ranking make no difference one way or another. Pay for PRV ranking type links are just that - NO real content for Google to even consider adding so they do NOT. A good Directory PAGE on the other hand usually DO end up in Google and near the top. Case in point is look no further than Manta, Linkedin, and well constructed Facebook Pages. We can prove this is how it works in our own directory listing service as every business listing in it IS on page 1 in Google, yet those high PRV ranked links we are paying for are NOT. Consumers are simply NOT interested in where we are linked back to, ONLY that they can find our stuff in Google and that is the whole matter of importance in reality today. Having good PRV ranking for your site is always GOOD as MIA indicates as it helps show Google and others better Credibility for your business since it is linked back to from other high traffic/high profile sites. Paying someone to do that for you however IS Gaming Google (and they do NOT like it one bit). PRV rankings will come naturally in time on their own as you build associations within your industry and business specific partnerships (which Google DOES LIKE). Yep, Google DOES have rules about PAYING someone to list your business at their high PRV ranked site (they clearly say NOT to do it)... Business Directory listings which charge you for a PAGE about what you do are more like web site design/hosting services (which is Just Fine in Google). Google does NOT CARE nor have rules against how many pages you have for your business, nor where such pages are located. They only care about seeing Unique Content, and Unique PAGES written by YOU with full rich content. The more full rich PAGES you have listed in Google the more Traffic you will get using all sorts of various business related Keywords you can not target from your site alone. Google puts emphasis on business pages coming from different IP addresses so they carry more weight. So What is the Bottom line in reality and how people search today Google wants CONTENT (always has). Not yet more text links to your business, but real full rich content with photos/video/coupons/maps/contact us pages/PDF downloads/Mobile Friendly pages/and all the other stuff you are NOT going to get via mere text links at any pay for PRV placement type service. They also want those Pages coded properly (we have the ONLY properly coded business page service on the web we know about). Proper coding means more frequent visits by Googlebot, as well as means more Mobile Friendliness as mobile browsers are picky about proper coding. I hope this helps clear up some differences for those looking for more information on the differences for a more informed decision making process.
What I find most ironic about this whole situation is the "money" angle. I mean, that is what it all comes down to in the end right? Money. I find it interesting that a whole new cottage industry has grown up around this series of updates. One, which includes SEO's offering to UNLINK you (for a price of course) from the very places they LINKED YOU. And secondly, the new rmoov DOT com that, for a monthly fee (of course) now offers to automatically scour the internet looking for links to your site, then automatically spam those places that house those links with a message like this: So Google makes money, SEO's make money, and now the new Remove URL services make money.... All I'm trying to do is provide a fair service at a fair price. And its met with such disdain. And yet again, everyone from the SE to the same people who not only encouraged the linking, but actually charged their customers for it, are now scampering around hurriedly to remove those same links. At some point the internet will be devoid of links and the entire point of navigating via hyperlinks will become utterly pointless.
I have so far encouraged directory owners to remove listings when requested. But using a spam service to spider sites for contact information and send out automated emails is pretty bad. I would have to advise directory owners to ignore requests from services like this one. For clients, a service like this will result in the removal of a lot of good links. You are more likely to get action from a legitimate owner that has 1 or 2 sites and cares about then. On the other hand an owner that owns 100 duplicate sites will likely ignore the request.
I just looked at your site - NICE I like it. Google on the other hand at some point may not Who knows... I do see several critical Errors in page coding (most are simple fixes). Critical type errors ARE penalized in Google and Bing (I know that for a fact). Doc type, parse type errors at the top of your header needs to be added/changed as the W3c can not tell what sort of site it even is at this point (so neither can Googlebot)... Yep Google sent out a lot of such requests - Most are bogus. You should NEVER remove a Quality link or you will be sorry you did. The question then is simple - Just what is Quality in the eyes of the search giant.
While you are absolutely entitled to your opinion about the whole link removal situation, I'm afraid I cannot let this particular comment go past without a correction. rmoov dot com does not "scour the internet looking for links to your site, then automatically spam those places that house those links". While there are other link removal tools out there that do say that they find and assess links algorithmically, offering advice to users as to which links should be removed, rmoov DOES NOT do this. We have from Day 1 taken the view that link analysis should be done by humans, putting eyes on sites. rmoov is actually a link removal campaign management tool which provides users with a means of running, managing and reporting on link removal activities at scale. The first requirement for users is that they upload the list of link URLs they want to try to have removed. They must find and analyse their own link data in order to have such a list. Once the URLs are uploaded, rmoov aggregates URLs to their root domains and locates contact data that is publicly available through ICANN or WhoIs listings. Users have the option of manually adding other contact information if they wish. rmoov also enables users to create custom email templates which can be used at both campaign and domain level. The email you refer to is a "catch all" template that was created as an example in our system. On seeing complaints from you and others about having received this letter, we took the decision to replace it, since it seems that our users overwhelmingly are inclined to take the easy option and simply use the example template instead of making the effort to create letters which are appropriate to their own situation. Email sent through rmoov is managed at all times by the individual account holder. We take feedback from webmasters very seriously. One of the core principles guiding the development of rmoov has always been to try to make a difficult situation easier for webmasters wherever possible. In fact, this is the reason that you see the link on the email which allows webmasters to advise that links have been cleaned up with a couple of clicks - intended to relieve the workload for webmasters be removing the need for them to send follow up email. Apologies from us for any offense caused by the example template. If you have any other feedback, questions or concerns about rmoov we would love to hear from you any time. Sha