... Said nobody, ever.
At least that's what we thought, until @AnneRuthmann (is it okay that we link to you?) tweeted a pretty bewildering story our way. In a nutshell, a lawyer who provides anti-piracy and intellectual property protection services contacted a webmaster and asked her to remove an outbound link from her website that linked to his client's site.
Confusion, amusement, and dismay are all appropriate responses. Let's dive into the story a little more to see what the heck happened.
Oh, and just to clarify the title of this post, we don't actually want you to stop linking to us ;-)
Why a Website Sent a Lawyer to Another Website ... Over an Inbound Link
A lawyer at Guardlex contacted Christine at Big Pink Cookie on behalf of their client -- whose name Christine graciously removed in her blog post detailing this whole ordeal -- asking her to please remove a link from her site that led to their client's site. Since he works on behalf of the Anti-Piracy Department at Guardlex, which provides services that protect intellectual property, we presume the outbound link was classified as a piracy or intellectual property "problem."
According to the letter sent by the lawyer, the link from Christine's website resulted in "material financial loses [sic] to the company."
How on earth would an outbound link result in material financial losses to a company, you might ask? Well, we're going to get into some possibilities in the next section, but according to the letter, it was "due to search engine penalties resulting from the links originating under your control."
According to Christine, the link in question was from a blog post she wrote in 2001. That's eleven years ago. So in terms of inbound links, it's a pretty darn good link to get to your website. And the link was made even more valuable due to the fact that it was to an eyeglasses website, coming from a blog post in which Christine discussed the new eyeglasses she received. In other words, it was contextually relevant.
I mean, it could have been a little more relevant, like if Christine's entire website was dedicated 100% to eyeglasses. For example, let's say I link to a site about men's clothing in New York. That's a pretty good link, because it has relevant anchor text and the HubSpot domain has some authority in the SERPs -- we create lots of content and our domain isn't brand spankin' new. It's not the best link they could receive because our website isn't dedicated to talking about men's clothing in New York, but it still has some helpful qualities. The point of all of this is that links like the one going from Christine's site typically help your SEO, not hurt it.
But even though this link sounds high quality, are there ever any instances in which an inbound link is not good for a website? Could this have been one of them?
When an Inbound Link Might Hurt You
Saying an inbound link isn't good for a website is different than saying it's bad for a website. There are inbound links that don't provide value for a website -- those that are contextually irrelevant, from domains with low authority, or contain poor anchor text, for example. We've written about it in full in our blog post "Deconstructing the Qualities of High Quality Links" if you'd like to learn more. But those links don't actually hurt the website that's being linked to. In other words, just because someone doesn't provide great anchor text doesn't mean your website will get dinged by Google for it.
There is precedent, however, for sites being dinged due to excessive linking from a host of low quality sites. That's the whole precedent of the Panda updates from 2011! Sites like JCPenney that received hundreds of thousands of links from link farms were dinged in the SERPs when the first Panda updates rolled out. But that's a much different scenario than Christine's -- her site is far from a link farm, and contains high quality content that I'd certainly want some link juice from.
So when else could an inbound link cause damage to your business? Well, I supposed some damage could come if your business was positioned in a negative light on someone else's website -- but wouldn't that fall under ... slander? I don't know, I didn't go to law school, but it sure as sugar doesn't fall under intellectual property and piracy. And the lawyer's letter states the material financial losses sustained by his client were due to "search engine penalties resulting from the links originating under your control." So it wasn't that her link caused potential customers to stop visiting the website in question ... it was that the link allegedly caused penalties in the SERPs.
Learning From This Story
Like Christine and her hosting company note, it's her call whether she removes the link to their website -- which she did. In fact, the hosting company responded to the lawyer with a bit of an exasperated (and hilarious) tone, saying "We've had this discussion with you before: there is no infringement of anything in merely linking to one site from another -- case law exists on this. We absolutely will not instruct our users to remove links that violate no statute or our terms of service. Whether they choose to do it on their own is entirely up to them."
So apparently this company is making money off of the notion that inbound links can cause damage to websites. That's a pretty big bummer, because it means there are tons of businesses out there losing their money to lawyers fighting a fight that doesn't need to be fought. I'm not saying Guardlex is doing this maliciously -- and I'm not saying they aren't, either. I will say that they offer copyright infringement protection plans on their website, if that sways your decision either way. But this could all be a symptom of a bunch of people not realizing that inbound links aren't a violation of intellectual property; they're internet currency that almost always make you more successful, not to mention common courtesy when you're citing someone else's content.
The internet has been around for a while, but it's still new in the grand scheme of things, so we're all still learning "the rules." And by learning the rules, I mean making them up as we go. And slowly but surely, our legal system is also catching up to those rules we're putting in place as we all figure out the right way to work with one another on the internet. So while this could all be a huge misunderstanding fueled by lack of knowledge of how internet linking works, we can take it as a cue that not everyone "gets" it yet. And for goodness sake, don't throw your money out the window because a so-called expert tells you to do something; there's a chance they're not much more in-the-know that you are ... they might just seem like it.
Have you ever asked someone to stop linking to your website? If so, why?
Image credit: walknboston
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Christoph Trappe 9:16 AM on July 20, 2012
Very interesting read.
A few years ago I ran a community news site and the traditional media outlet nearby highlighted the site under its blog section. I asked for the link to be removed because I thought it looked like the site was part of their blogs. It wasn't.
I did find it relevant, though, when they linked to specific articles.
Jon DiPietro 9:30 AM on July 20, 2012
Ridiculous. Google has said over and over that it does not penalize you for poor links. It simply devalues those poor links.
And they actually paid a lawyer to threaten somebody over this? Who's advising these people?
Matt Sullivan 9:41 AM on July 20, 2012
While working as a digital marketing manager with one company, I was meeting with our in-house legal team to go over our content policies.
At one point, the lawyer was absolutely confused by the fact that I was linking to other sites without first gaining WRITTEN permission, and he would go after anyone that linked to us like that.
I then had to explain how the web worked...
Randy Kemp 9:43 AM on July 20, 2012
I wonder what the lawyer would have done had the website used a URL shortening service? Would they have also gone after the URL shortening service company - even if it turned out to be Google? On another front, I knew a small business owner that used the word focus in his URL and company name. A lawyer for a big company contacted him and asked him not to use the word focus - they had a claim on it.
Brian Thackston 9:48 AM on July 20, 2012
The article neglects to mention Google's latest update, "Penguin" which you can read about on Moz here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-penguin-update-whiteboard-friday.
You're correct that prior to this update, links would never trigger a penalty. Now, they can. Especially when a large portion of a site's backlink profile consists of very similar anchor text. So, your "men's clothing in New York" actually could do harm to that particular website--if they received an influx of links with that anchor text then Google may determine their backlink profile isn't diverse enough. This is "negative SEO" and one of the many reasons Internet marketers are getting lawyers involved in the link removal process.
Nick Kringas 10:00 AM on July 20, 2012
This never happened to me and I dont think one link from any site can have a negative impact.
The moral of the story is lawyers and SEO are like oil and water!
Jeremy Johnson 10:09 AM on July 20, 2012
Lawyers make a living out of fighting fights that don't need to be fought: Often their first contact is to advise you to instruct your own lawyer [so that the two lawyers can have a fight at your expense]. They're best avoided...
Blue Whale Apps 10:35 AM on July 20, 2012
Wow! Everyone is out to get money now a days. Really interesting read, and a much different blog post than the rest, which I enjoyed! Ah yi yi, what is going to be next?
And a laugh out loud to Randy Kemp on the lawyer trying to claim the word "focus" ... really? People are funny.
blog.bluewhaleapps.com
Jordana 11:02 AM on July 20, 2012
Great post!
Addie 11:41 AM on July 20, 2012
How silly! And a little sad that the business owner was duped into spending money on something so ... dumb.
Ric Pollock 11:59 AM on July 20, 2012
I'm afraid this may be a canary in a mine. Lawyers are or will discover that the web can be a lucrative place to ply their trade. We received a call from one who claimed an old part of our site had a copyright image owned by her client. That part of the site was built with Microsoft Front page eight years ago. We only used their photo gallery and clip art. We told them to go ahead and do what ever they liked, we would simply adjoin Microsoft as a defendant. It looks like they went away ... but the lesson is ... if we had not known the source of that photo or had lost track of the license ... this scam could have had a chance of being successful. It of course would not ever go to court, they would have used the weight of the process to make it cheaper for us to just give them money than fight it (like someone said above these things always involve two lawyers, both making a killing). Todate (9 months later) nothing more has happened.
Sean 3:13 PM on July 20, 2012
Has everyone forgotten how destructive links can be. Links are used to gather people's personal info. Anyone can post links but some would use links as a backdoor to gaining info for purposes of identity theft. Just saying not all links are so safe. BEWARE
Joy McCaffrey 4:22 PM on July 20, 2012
I checked Alexa and Guardlex has 118 inbound links. I wonder why they haven't forced all of those to be removed...
Oh, and "slander" is the spoken word. Anything written would be considered "libel."
Christine Tremoulet 5:26 PM on July 20, 2012
Actually, the link was to eyeglasses.com - just telling people that if they wanted glasses like mine, they had some options there.
You know, the WAY THE INTERNET WORKS.
I removed it, and then wrote the lawyer a nice note that he was CRAZY and then wrote my blog post because it was all so silly.
Just the rest of the details, since you wondered what the link was... but don't link to them, or you might get a letter too!!! (Rolling my eyes so hard it hurts...)
Diego Fernandez 7:36 AM on July 21, 2012
Some say backlinks can hurt rankings, some say not. Google has been vague as always.
Can someone please provide unequivocal and well founded information about the subject?
Mary Baum 12:12 PM on July 21, 2012
I hope it gets better now that doctors and lawyers are getting younger. Otherwise I'll persist in my belief that there must be a mandatory seminar during orientation week in law and medical school called, "Forget everything you ever knew about technology," :-p
kilroy238 12:36 PM on July 22, 2012
Copied from her blog "Big Pink Cookie"
Update 7/20/2012: Hey, Guardlex? SUCK IT. I just put the link to Eyeglasses.com back up. Because it was innocuous. Especially after reading all the comments on my site, BoingBoing and Hubspot. Oh, and I didn’t ask their permission to link to them either… BECAUSE THAT IS HOW THE INTERNET WORKS.
Good for her. I sent a nice letter to guardlex as well as eyeglasses.com reminding them how the internet is supposed to work.
If anyone would like to do the same antipiracy@guardlex.com, customerservice@eyeglasses.com, stefanie@eyeglasses.com
:)
bloggerpal 4:19 PM on July 22, 2012
The internet is a hyper-competitive marketplace. It is now easy and commonplace to trash your competitors' website by buying inlinks to it from websites that are known to be hated by Google. And once that happens, what can a company do? There is no alternative but to hire companies to "request" link takedowns. And when you are talking about tens and hundreds of thousands of links, and even millions in some cases, then some decent links are going to get the nasty email requests. This is not a problem started by the merchant who is just trying to survive; it is a problem started by Google, which has "decided" for all of us what is "ethical" to do on the internet.
John Danenbarger 6:14 AM on July 23, 2012
Outside of the bottom feeders, generally, I have discovered through life that few lawyers have any clue about how business works. Yes, they should advise to protect their clients, but on an informed basis. That information should come from their client since the client SHOULD know his own business. If the lawyer doesn't want to understand or does not, get a new one.
Ian Howells 8:55 AM on July 23, 2012
JC Penny didn't get "dinged" because they had links from link farms, and that's not what Panda did. (It's what Penguin did - you should probably know the difference between the two since you offer an SEO tool)
Who do you guys have researching this stuff?
Amanda 12:55 PM on July 23, 2012
This happened to me once when I wrote a post about great photographer websites. I took a screenshot of his homepage and linked to him, complimenting him on the site. He found my number and called me furiously asking me to remove him because I had no right to mention him or take a screenshot of his website. I told him I did but was happy not to recommend him to anyone ever again. Good luck as a businessman with no idea how marketing works or how to take a public compliment.
Jonathan Price 4:49 AM on July 24, 2012
@Christine, on the plus side, many more people now know about Big Pink Cookie. Isn't the Internet a wonderful thing?
And Hubspot are WAY good at newsjacking. :-)
Gus van der Walt 7:38 AM on July 24, 2012
I am fairly new to whole SEO world yet I would never go out an issue a letter and say remove your link, I'd rather go out and say hey you have a cool site mind a little link juice?
I am noticing that people, mainly here in South Africa, actually have no idea about the online world or the currencies that we want!
Jon Neubauer 9:52 PM on July 24, 2012
just read this - and it's so ironic since we got a similar request today!
Nicholas Cardot 1:01 AM on July 26, 2012
I recently received an email threatening legal action if I wouldn't remove a link from one of my pages to another website. The part that really got me going was that the link they wanted me to remove was the link that is created with your name when you leave a comment. In other words, they put the link there. Here I thought they left that comment to be a part of the conversation. As a side note, it was on a PR2 article on my site.
They even threatened legal action if I did not remove it. Do you guys have any references of lawsuits that have taken place about concerning links?