Google’s “Detected Unnatural Links” Message is Unnatural for Google

Just got this:

I applaud Google for notifying site owners that they have some spammy-looking links. I don’t applaud them for not telling site owners which links in particular look spammy. If you have been link-building, then you probably know where to look, but if like me, you haven’t, then you have to spend time figuring out where the crap is and trying to squash it. And in my case, my blog posts get copied by all sorts of assholes like The Sam Schwartz who can probably be categorized as “bad neighborhoods”.

Boo-hoo for me right?

So whenever I have heard a Googler talk about solving problems, like spam or bad data in Google Maps, the typical response is that they like to solve things with software – which is why it can take a long time for them to solve some of those not-easily-solved-with-software problems.

So by Google’s standards, isn’t forcing me to conduct a manual witch hunt for bad links a failure on their part?

UPDATE: Apparently I have had my head in the sand today. According to Matt Cutts on Google+, if you got one of these messages, you don’t need to panic, although your search traffic might drop. 🙂

Some helpful articles on these shenanigans:

Google Sends Out New Batch Of Unnatural Link Notifications
Insanity: Google Sends New Link Warnings, Then Says You Can Ignore Them