To Fix An Incoming Link Or Not?

[tatermarketing]

I recently received a unnatural link notice from Google.  The thing is, I haven't done any link building in the last two years.

So, I looked at my latest links report within Google Webmaster Tools and see where one of our dealer's website has been updated recently and now includes a site-wide link to us.

Site note: My brand name as the anchor text ... no keywords nearby.

I think this is what may be causing the problem because nothing else within the report really jumps out at me.  Also, it lines up with the timeline.  It looks like they changed their site to include the link at the beginning of April.  Google was noticing the links throughout April and to the present.  I got the notice May 19th.

Now, I have a good relationship with this dealer and can have him change anything I want at the drop of a hat.

The question is, by having him change it am I admitting to Google wrongdoing and thus hurting myself by inviting further scrutiny.  Should I leave it as is since it truly is a legitimate link?

Google having false positives like this really muddies the water.

Thanks guys!

[eyepaq]

In your shoes, I would send a short reconsideration request and explain the situation: that you don't do link building, that what you think it might look odd is that link but you didn't requested, is natural so you can't touch it - and see the reply - if you have some manual action in place or not.

They are not hunting us down - but they do send a lot of notices like that to innocent people so it's worth dealing with it so you won't be colateral damage in this spamy link war.

Cheers.

[tatermarketing]

Awesome responses guys.  That's how I was leaning.  Google's fishing expedition isn't going to work on me.

[jesse-landry]

You could change it without informing Google and just see what happens.

Personally I wouldn't do anything until you've actually seen a decrease in traffic and ranking placement. I received an unnatural link notice in GWMT back in March for one of my sites and have yet to see anything happen to it. There was black hat SEO work done on that site in the past (not by me, of course) so I wouldn't be surprised if all the sudden it took a hit but to this day I've seen nothing but improvement in my target keywords for that site.

I feel like if I had responded to Google and submitted my site for reconsideration I would have seen bigger penalties. So I created a re-inclusion package and waited... two months later I see no problems so I'm still waiting.

[MSWD]

If it were me I would leave it as is. It is a legitimate link coming from a dealer web site.  I really think Google is baiting here.