Cloak detection

[askjoe]

In my industry there are a couple of websites - all run by one individual that continue to come up 1 and 2 on the first page of various keywords - and I mean a lot keywords! The thing is, sometimes he's comming in at number 1 for a product that isn't even listed on the page! I have a suspicious feeling that this individual is engaging in less than ethical search engine op.

How can you tell if an individual is cloaking or using some other similar form of SEO to get good rankings - I've looked in his source code - nothing - also, I've checked his links - I've got more links! Any help on your guys part would be greatly appreciated.

[Nick_W]

Have you looked at the page cache?

It might well be that at the time of indexing he had those prd's and kw's on his page.

Nick

[askjoe]

Yes, I've checked this - it's as it is within the index. What ever this person is doing - they're banking - Big Time! He's comming in on the first page of google with keywords costing 1-1.50 or more a click on PPC.

I'd really like to figure this out.

[heini]

>they're banking - Big Time!
How so? Do they actually sell the stuff people are searching for with those keywords? Are the sites thus relevant to the query?

[askjoe]

Yes, the keywords are often the names of the products themselves - this individual also uses the same distributor we do - I kinda have some inside info as to the volume he does - it's very large and he pays for virtually no advertising. This is how I know he's well off.

We do rather large volume in sales ourselves but pay for most of our traffic via premium and adwords. But wouldn't you know it, right under our premium listing we're paying for - there he is!

[Nick_W]

Steady with the!'s askjoe, you'll hurt yourself ;) - Only kidding, I'm sure it's pretty vexing.

One thing you might do is to build another site and try some cloaking yourself. You may just give him a run for his money :)

Nick

[marcs]

Yess, I've checked this - it's as it is within the index.

Maybe they're not cloaking at all. Have you checked their backlinks and the anchor text for those? Maybe they got a ton of high PR sites to link to them using various products numbers (or other keyword phrases) as anchor text.

[Nick_W]

<nick smacks head in disbelief>

Of course, first thing you should check after the source. Thanks Marcia!

Nick