Matt_Pellerin - 5:38 pm on May 19, 2005 (gmt 0)

Hi All,

Sorry for the fantastic title, but I really need some help.

I have lurked, read and learned a lot here and have only asked for help one other time, so here goes.

Recently my main website has gone from hardly any IBL's to massive amounts, and I mean massive. Almost overnight!

I used to always show around 2500 IBL's (give or take a few) in all the major SE's, so this must be the true number for my site. Two days ago it was brought to my attention, by a competitor no less, that my IBL's had skyrocketed. This competitor had the ba]]$ to ask my how I did it and offered me a fairly large amount of cash to share my "secret". He directed me to take a look for myself, so I did and I was floored. I had something like 130,000 IBL's from each engine (except Google of course). I checked again yesterday thinking it was a fluke... not only was it not a fluke but I now had 220,000 IBL's showing on each engine. Needless to say I began to worry. Today when I checked there are something like 327,000 IBL's showing from each engine.

I am getting really scared now because I am thinking someone has it out for me and is trying to get my site penalized.

I'm not normally paranoid, really. But this is nuts.

Can anyone help, or shed some light, or begin hypothesizing? Please.

Sincerely,

One Scared Straight Webmaster

[edited by: tedster at 7:13 pm (utc) on May 19, 2005]
[edit reason] remove specifics [/edit]