I received the following email today:
> I'm the webmaster of http://www.xxx.org.
>
> According to the results of a recent scan, we could NOT
> locate the link to http://www.xxx.org at your site.
> According to our records, the page on your site with a link
> to http://www.xxx.org should be.
>
> If you have removed the link to our site by accident or in
> error, or the link to our site has been moved elsewhere,
> please let us know immediately.
>
> Otherwise, the link to your site at http://www.xxx.org
> will be automatically deleted after 3 days.
My response to this email (actual website URL changed to xxx)? Quite simple. I was offended. Read below:
I am offended by such a rude email. I will not be adding a link to your mall. Get your act together. Links are a service to your website visitors not a cold exchange. If you haven't learned anything about the Internet as a network of relationships, then I don't want to support you.
Don't threaten people with link subtraction. If you are that free and loose with your links, then a link from you is really not important to me. It will generate no visitors to my website.
I don't object to exchanging links with other websites. Indeed, I encourage that. But I don't encourage threats. That's not cool at all. It's stupid. It doesn't help to cultivate relationships. And it's relationships which build a workable and profitable website business.
Why don't people understand that by now?
