I've tried auto-replies. People get even more offended by that. Here's someone that posted after getting an auto-reply in 2007: http://www.ginside.com/2007/1186

I've tried auto-replies. People get even more offended by that. Here's someone that posted after getting an auto-reply in 2007: http://www.ginside.com/2007/1186/matt-cutts-doesnt-respond-to-e-mail-anymore/ http://www.ginside.com/2007/1186/matt-cutts-doesnt-respond-t... . He was angry because he thought the battle against paid links was useless, and wanted me to email him back to justify our efforts on paid links. His conclusion? "When I met up with Matt at SES San Jose, he seemed like a cool guy, but I guess this [getting an auto-reply] proves my positive-assumptions wrong." Don't get me wrong. I like Jonathan (the author of the blog) and stopped by his blog to leave a comment to answer his question. But if you asked a neutral third party, "Which is better? To spend your time working on new algorithms for paid links? To write blog posts or make videos about paid links? Or to reply to emails justifying working on paid links?" I think the the neutral party would put replying to emails about paid links at the bottom of the priority list. And the amount of email at Google is pretty epic. Even after trying to reduce my email load through all the conventional methods like unsubscribing from newsletters, my mail storage is over 50 gigabytes. So there may not be a good conventional answer to the email issue for me. I really don't want to be rude by not responding to emails, but I also believe I should also be working on the biggest-impact things I can.