Bullying SEO Tactics

Good afternoon everyone,

This is just a quick update….

I am going to be away for most of the weekend, so the next update probably won’t be until early next week.

Anyway, I know I keep saying this, but I am going to say it one last time, THANK YOU for all your kind e-mails and comments.

I was even contacted by a lawyer who offered his services for free, his advice has been similar to previous advice I have received, so it seems I have been doing the right thing thus far.

Amazingly I received a spam e-mail in my inbox yesterday which in my opinion is even more shocking and amusing that the previous ones I received. So I may post that e-mail on here as well in the near future.

On a more serious note I have received numerous e-mails and comments from people who have received very similar e-mail threats to the ones I had last week. So it appears that this may not be just one crazy guy, it could be becoming an actual dark SEO technique to bully the smaller and less experienced web site / blog owners.

A lot of the people who read my blog are webmasters, SEO experts, developers etc…. so to us the bizarre google request e-mail was clearly an absurd request, but how many less experienced webmasters out there would have been genuinely concerned by such a threat?

I have heard of cases where webmasters are blackmailed for large sums of cash with the threat of Dos attacks etc, but in general such threats are only done to large and wealthy corporations, whereas the e-mails I received were very much aimed at the small business owner, the young blogger, the newbie webmaster etc. This in my opinion is very worrying!

WebProNews have actually done an article about my experience, and they raise the same question that I am raising now: “Has this ever happened to you?”

So if you have had similar threats then please use the comments feature below, or use the contact page (top right of this page).

Thanks for all your support.

Dean