I am trying to get rid of some bad links for a client.
The problem I am hitting again and again is that the really nasty ones don’t have contact details on their site.
Also often the whois lookup reveals nothing.
Can anyone suggest any other ways of getting in touch with the webmasters?
If contact details of linking website’s webmaster is not found, you can opt-in to use Google Disavow tool. Under this method, Google directly removes the bad link, thus avoiding the need of contacting website owner.
It is not an immediate solution, since it takes more time to remove links.
Are you sure they really are “bad links”? Has Google sent you an “unnatural links” warning? If not, the links are probably nothing to worry about. In general, Google is quite good at recognising “bad links” and disregarding them.
If you cant get hold of the webmaster then dissavow is the only way. Personally unless you know exactly what you are doing then get a good agency to do it.