Imitation site breaking the rules?

[dickbaker]

Three years ago I began construction of a site where retail stores within a certain niche could have full-page advertisements for their products, brands and services.

It's taken a lot of time to call these retailers, write their advertisements, and get them to see the value of what my site offers them.

Until recently, my site was the only site of its kind in my niche.

Today, however, I found a site that's trying to do what mine does. There are profound differences between the sites, though. Nevertheless, this new site is gaining rank for some keywords and phrases.

If that were my only concern, I'd let it lie.

However, the site features retail stores that do not exist. If you look up the store name, address, city and state, you won't find it. If you call the number, there's no such store.

I've spent hundreds of hours over the past couple years getting my site into the #1 position for terms such as "Michigan widget stores," or whatever other state you wish to search for.

The stores on my site are real, and they pay to be on my site. The stores on my new competitor's site are purely fictional. He's trying to attract stores by fooling them into thinking that other stores are subscribing.

In your opinion, do I have a legitimate complaint with Google, or should I just let this site die by natural causes?

Thanks for any replies.

[edited by: tedster at 6:32 am (utc) on Mar. 3, 2007]
[edit reason] remove unneeded specifics [/edit]

[Quadrille]

You have no complaint at all; if people want to publish fiction, there's nothing you can do about it, and nothing Google would wish to do about it. It's not their problem.

You best bet maybe a new slogan - "4567 stores, all real and all ready to do business!"

I wouldn't worry, though. As business model, your rival has found the perfect way to guarantee no repeat visitors. Just keep doing a good job, and keep well optimized, and wait for him to fade out and die. :)

[dickbaker]

Yeah, that was a pretty stupid question on my part.

It's just frustrating to work so hard to get to the top, and then be challenged by some hack.

Oh well. Back to gathering more links and adding more content.

[dickbaker]

An update, for anyone who cares.

I just did a search for all of the states. For example, "Alabama widget stores."

Google is using my meta description, which only mentions the state once. For example, <meta name="description" content="Find Alabama widget stores on a map. Widget.com is the only site to provide detailed information.">

The text on the page mentions Alabama widget stores several times.

Just wondering if this could be what's going on. I've consistently ranked #1 for every state. Now, for at least four states, I'm no longer #1.

As an experiment, I changed the meta description for the Montana widget store page (not a lot of widget stores in Montana). I'll give it several weeks to see if there's any change.

[sandpetra]

I thought Google was ignoring meta totally these days (or at least not using it for ranking purposes).

I have a unique description on a new site launched last month and doing well in Google and a search for the text in the description brings up zip.

[dickbaker]

sandpetra, I'd read a year or two ago that Google wasn't paying attention to meta tags. But, at that time, there were many pages on my site that Google was using meta descriptions for.

There's another widget site out there that offers free listings for widget stores. It also has other content.

Previously, this site didn't rank well for "(insert state name here) widget stores." Now that site is beating mine in eight of the fifty states. This happened very suddenly.

I have over 1600 pages of content on my site, versus the other site's 394. I have over 5,200 other sites linking to mine, versus the other site having 1400. I have almost twice as much traffic. (200,000 visitors a month versus 100,000).

I'm trying to figure out how or why Google has placed this site above mine for eight keyphrases. Maybe it's the meta descriptions. Or maybe Google is just going through one of its weird changes.

[Quadrille]

I thought Google was ignoring meta totally these days (or at least not using it for ranking purposes).

Recently it is quite clear that unique meta descriptions matter - pages without them usually get only supplementary listings or none at all. And I know this is true, because it's happened to me (as well as seeing numerous other reports).

The good news is that once you install unique meta d's, google 'self-corrects', and full listing returns. :)

(Assuming no other problems!).

[dickbaker]

OK, here's something else that has me wondering what's going on.

The other site that offers plain listings for widget stores does not mention the words "store" or "shop" in the meta tags, or in the on-page text, or anywhere else. The other site only uses the term "widget dealers."

The title tags on this site read, "theothersite.com/widget dealers/Montana." The meta description tag refers to "Montana widget dealers."

The title tag on my site reads "Montana widget shops, Montana widget stores." Also, the terms "Montana widget shops" or "Montana widget stores" are repeated several times in the page text.

Yet, as I've said, this site is beating me in eight states for the term "(insert state here) widget stores."

It's like doing a Google search for "Montana car dealers," and the #1 result is a site titled, "Montana car washes."

It doesn't make sense.

[tedster]

Have you looked at anchor text for their backinks? On-page factors are less than half of what gets weighted ito the algorithm.

[bwnbwn]

dickbaker
Look for hidden text small text etc. as I ams seeing this more and more working really well. Site reported but actually doing better just waiting for an algo change were they go poof.

Bet this person is doing something like this

[dickbaker]

No hidden text, and there aren't many sites linking to the states' pages. And any sites that do use the term "dealers."

Today I'm back to being #1 for one of the states, although a fluctuation of one position here or there on Google obviously isn't unusual. What's unusual is that I don't recall having seen this site on the first page of Google for any searches for "(state) widget shops" until the other day.