Unsolicited Link Requests

I get very stupid link requests.

Tuesday, March 31st, 2020

I’ve been publishing One Foot Tsunami for over a decade, with a new post every single weekday. That’s led to an archive of close to 3,000 posts covering a broad range of topics. The site also does fairly well in search engines, appearing high in all manner of search results.

As a result, I frequently receive spam from folks who’d like me to link to their sites on the web. This generally takes the form of some sort of non-sequitur, such as when I wrote a post joking about setting up an online dating profile for a mobster, and a spammer wanted me to link to their tips for online dating.

Here’s another recent example:

  • While browsing your site, I noticed you have an amazing article from this page:

    onefoottsunami.com/2019/08/21/the-majestic-mattress-migration/

    My team actually just published a comprehensive article on “How to Pick A Mattress – A Step by Step Guide For Choosing The Perfect One” which I think your visitors would truly appreciate and add value to your awesome article.

If you visit that OFT post, you’ll see it was about a herd of air mattresses that were blown through a neighborhood in comical fashion. It’s not likely anyone is even going to read a post from so many months ago, but if they do, it’s probably not because they’re mattress shopping.

These unsolicited link requests often amuse me, but the one I received yesterday was really something. Have a look:

A spam request to link to “The Ultimate Pet Nutrition Guide”.

Let’s break this down:

While researching on your website (https://onefoottsunami.com/2013/10/14/news-anchor-eats-cat-barf/), I saw that you linked to a website about pet nutrition.

That URL alone should tip you off that I definitely did not “link to a website about pet nutrition”. If you’ve got a strong stomach, give that post a read. The archived video is still available, and still awful.

I wanted to share The Ultimate Pet Nutrition Guide , since it’s clear you want to help pet parents, too!

Actually, I really don’t think that is clear.

Do you think it would be possible to add a link to this guide on your site in order to share this valuable knowledge with even more pet parents? If you share it on your social media pages, even better!

Would it be possible? Absolutely. Am I going to do it? No I am not. I will, however, mine this stupid spam for a bit of new content on the site. Does that help?