Submitting Competitor's Sites?

[SouperGuy]

What is the netiquette on submitting competitor’s sites? Is this something I should be doing, or is it dirty pool?
Souperguy

[georged]

Depends. If you're doing it just to be a smart alec, don't bother. If there's a 404 ahead of your ranking, I'd submit it. But that's just me.

[engine]

SouperGuy, welcome to the forums.

Exactly as Georged said.

I don't see any value in doing someone elses job, unless you're getting paid for it or it's a 404.

Far more can be achived by a focused effort to optimise and submit your own sites, as appropriate.

[WebGuerrilla]

I personally don't restrict it to just 404's. If for example you submit a page to AltaVista and it ends up ranking 27th, you may want to resubmit sites 1-26. Especially if you notice that the dates of the pages are quite old.

Getting an engine to refresh your competitive page set will quite often provide a boost of several positions. Not only will 404's be removed, pages that no longer match the current algorithm will be dropped or relocated.

Once all the pages have a date that is fairly close to each other, it becomes much easier to analyze pages and make adjustments. You also may be able to identify sites that might be cloaking.