Competitors hurting you

Shouldn't have an effect but...

[steveb]

Suppose you and others reported thirty interlinked, duplicate, doorway sites with 15 to 30 hidden links each, and they responded by... including you in the hidden links!

Is Google clever enough to penalize the 30 sites interlinking via hidden links, but clever enough to not punish the four or five extra sites that do not link to this web, but who are now included in the hidden links?

(I've only found one of these hidden links to me so far, but got three visitors from it yesterday... presumably all crawling bots.)

[deejay]

I believe Google (and/or Googleguy) have stated that penalties are only issued for things within the webmaster's control.

You cannot control who links to you.

You can only control who you link to.

ergo, If you don't have a link back into this arrangement you should be ok.

I think...

[gmoney]

I agree with deejay.

If you are looking for a little piece of mind then try to imagine the rampant abuse that would take place if Google did allow people to directly hurt their competition. I'm sure that even the smallest window of "opportunity" would be exploited. I am confident that Google is too smart to open up that can of worms.

With that being said, in light of your current situation, I would still be extra careful of the things you can control. Who knows, this type of activity might put you under close Google watch:)