First Rate's COO, Kevin Francis, just contacted me about the blog spam I received recently from their company:

It recently came to my attention that a First Rate consultant had engaged in less than optimal link building. First Rate does not support sub optimal link building and the consultant in this case was acting outside of company policy. The consultant in question has been reprimanded and we are investigating whether there are any other examples that need to be removed. We take these matters seriously and I apologise for this oversight.

I'm happy to hear that the consultant in question has been reprimanded and it's good to know that this is not part of their corporate policy.

As such, I feel that the original post has served its purpose and I have removed the references to First Rate's client (as he was the victim here, as much as I was) and I've also removed the offending piece of spam from the comments.

The moral of the story is: If you can identify the source of blog spam, name and shame them and it will make a difference.

The First Rate responds to blog spam issue article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.