November 10, 2008 by Eddy Philipe
We at Top Click try to promote best practice in the world of SEO. We hope the message we give to clients is that its perfectly possible to run a hugely successful campaign within the rules set out by Google and other search engines. The last thing we want is to see is clients getting cast down the rankings due to penalties.
But as we know, not everyone is quite so ethical. If a competitor is breaking the rules it’s completely fair enough that you should want to do something about it, all we’re talking about is a level playing field, after all. So what happens when you suspect a competitor of breaking the rules and gaining a competitive edge through so called ‘black hat’ SEO?
Well, before you do anything, you have to be sure. Do things like highlight all the text on the site, looking for hidden keywords, compare the site to its Google Cache version to see any changes, use site strength indicator on the page to see if the strength correlates with the quality of the site. A good Google search will tell you several other common unscrupulous techniques. Check and see if you can find a smoking gun, though bear in mind that breaking of many of the so called rules is tacitly tolerated by Google.
If you do find something outrageous, you can report terms of service violations through Google Webmaster Tools. However, I really wouldn’t expect swift, brutal justice. What’s most likely to happen is Google will take you complaint on board and attempt to tweak the algorithm to penalise people breaking the rules in this way in the future. When and if they do you’ll see the offending site drop down the rankings.
Sorry, that’s probably not what you wanted to hear, is it?
Related posts:
