Ever since Google released its Penguin update last year, which penalizes sites for being linked to by low quality sites, I’ve been getting a regular stream of link removal requests. (Yeah, I know this implies that my site is low quality, but I’ll let that go.)
Because this site has an algorithm that searches Twitter, Bing, Wikipedia and other sites for related content based on keywords from an article’s teaser, there are lots of links to other sites. These links are auto-generated as a reference so you can see how people on Twitter react to a news item, research it on Wikipedia, or search Bing for more info.
They’re done automatically. I don’t add these links manually, so if you want me to remove your link, tough luck. I don’t want to mess with the code, and I don’t have the time.
It’s a problem that Google created, and there’s a service on their Webmaster Tools called “Disavow Links” where you can remove the links yourself. Sure, they recommend that you try contacting the site owner first, but they don’t know that this creates extra work for us.
With that said, if I linked to you on my blog, then I’m more than willing to remove it. Otherwise, do it yourself on Webmaster Tools.
