I am using WP readymade theme from last 1 yr But suddenly today I got email from wordpress theme owner that remove my link from footer. I shocked why they wants to remove links from theme? I don't know But can anyone share if anybody know. Here's the mail which I got from them: ********************** Dear Sir/Madam I hope you can help me. The footer of your blog <<My blog that I don’t want to show here>> has a link to our site <<their site>>. The link was used illegally and without our knowledge or consent. We recognise you are not to blame for this and we are currently instigating legal action against the company we suspect may have been responsible. However, Google has identified such links as spam and has penalised us by suspending our site from its index. Because we are only a small company, this has left us on the verge of bankruptcy and already put many of us - with families and mortgages - out of work. We would therefore be extremely grateful if you could remove the link to us. It is a simple process and you can either use the procedure below, or, if you prefer, replace our link with one of your choosing. We are currently contacting blog owners rather than website hosting companies but because we are fast running out of options we may soon reluctantly have to do so. In addition, because our site has received a Google suspension, continuing to link to us may also put your site at risk. <<They had been given me Instruction to remove footer links.>> Thank you; we would really appreciate your help. ********************** Thanks, HV Web SEO
I would think its been identified as a potentially paid link, not spam. people used to sponsor WP themes to get links. part of google's paid links war. lol @ "The link was used illegally and without our knowledge or consent"
Sometimes the competitor to that site is using 'cheap' tricks to reduce the backlinks to that site.Did you check where the mail came from is legitimate? So before removing credits from your footer,it would be better if you contact the real website admin and ask him for the details.
I thinks it's an automated email, and very well personalized sent to you by some competitive website owner who just won't to hurt the sponsor website and reduce the total links.
I was reading a thread about this in the Google groups about a month or so ago.. It seemed someone had been de-indexed and was asking for help in the Google groups, He did get a answer from Google. From what I could work out, he had a heap of WP themes that he was giving away to anyone that wanted them. but he had loaded the footer up with sitewide links to his sites.. some of the themes were quite popular and got downloaded and used by lots of people, but Google treated the links as spam. Poor guy was frantically emailing everyone he could find that was using his themes and kept updating the thread with his progress. There must have been more to it, because I did not think Google would penalize for that (they should just discount the links) otherwise sabotage would be rife. Cheers James
Right. You can not sell links on your web site. Google hate this. You can put paid links but with rel="nofollow" or without this you will be blacklisted by google.
i thank also same this is something like automated email, better contact then and see, please update what is going on from that point.
I was read this to a while back, seemed he was not fully deindexed from Google just getting - negative serp hit from this... If I remember right the Google team was telling him to get the links removed to get rid of the penilty.
I would go to the guy's actual site and e-mail him through there. If he confirms that he did send the link removal e-mail, then go ahead and comply with it. As people mentioned above, some scammers do dirty tricks to sabotage competitors, including fake e-mails.
I agree with vansterdam, just check up on it. If it is a real email, just take the link off the page. One link is not worth destroying somebodies life for.
This is just some idiot spamming you to get less links to his competitor, unless it came from that link's domain name.
If this really is a rival webmaster sabotaging his competition, I think things are going in the wrong direction and fast... Only Google can make it stop
If that is a fake e-mail by a competitor, that is a very low thing to do. What ever happened to ranking higher in the SERPs legit?