Reciprocal Links from Automated Source

[TalarMade]

Just a quick question.

We received an email from a website looking to exchange links with our blog. Their site seems relevant enough for our readers to benefit from the link being there, so everything seems fine from that point.

They began the message with Dear ******blog, then continued with their message of wanting to exchange links.

The email then signed off with

promo@*****.com

I was just wondering whether it's likely this was a manual email, or whether conducted via an automated service

Cheers

[TalarMade]

Ok .. cheers for the responses and clearing that up

[marcinlejman]

There are many tools which will scrape SERPs, then scrape WHOIS data and mass submit link exchange requests.

High quality link builders will customize their emails, but that costs money.

So, I guess in your case it was semi-automated. As the request seems, according to you, relevant to your site, the mass mailing targets could be pre-screened by a human, but after that, it's all automated.

[Keszi]

Hi Caroline,

There might be an automated software, but there are companies which are paying people to do that manually. And because of low qualification of those link builders, they usually are working as some "spam-bots".

In the email header check if the sender is the same as the reply-to address, that should tell if you are facing a software spam-bot or a human "spam-bot".

I hope it is the second one

Gr.,

Istvan