Spam in Inktomi

[RussellC]

I have a competitor that is spamming all the major search engines pretty badly and not getting caught. With Inktomi, he is using tons of multipe domains interlinking with the same content but different titles and descriptions. He comes up for some search terms for about 17 out of the top 20 results. I was going to ignore this as much as possible, but it is getting absurd. Anything I can do?

[agerhart]

You can report them:
[e-mail]
[e-mail]

[inktomi.com...]

OR

You can beat them at their own game! One would probably be more fun.

[RussellC]

Well I don't want to get booted because of spam. I don't think playing his game is an option. :)

[EliteWeb]

Plus if you play the game like that your paying to submit lots of URLs and that may not be an option for some people to hand over money like that.

[bigjohnt]

IMHO, failure to report blatant spam would be a great disservice to a client, or my company. Always act in the clients best interest, in this case, your own.

Fighting fire with fire and using the same spam tactics can get YOU banned. Gee, what fun THAT would be... your competitor reporting YOU for spamming...after you spend all that time and $$.

Any threat to my company or clients by competitor cheaters will be "outed." Whether the SE does anything about protecting their own company <SE> is up to them.

Spammers in other categories in which we do not compete, I leave alone. This is business, not a crusade.

[Macguru]

This is business, not a crusade.

Not beeing a native English speaker, I would vote this as the quote of the week!

Bravo! bigjohnt.

[mayor]

>> This is business, not a crusade <<

Well, it looks to me like you're about to make it a crusade. You'll spend a lot of time reporting spammers and every time you get one booted (if indeed the SE acts), another spammer will just move in, and the spammer that you got booted will be back in due time and smarter than ever.

Your best bet is find a way to rise above the spammers. That is effort better spent IMHO.

If you're after highly competitive keywords, you're probably going to have to deal with the spam problem. So consider going after less competitive keywords and keyword phrases. You may actually get more traffic on pages optimized for less competitive phrases because you'll have the playing field more to yourself. And the traffic you do get will probably be better targeted.

[littleman]

Inktomi does not care about spam. If these are paid for pages you will have little luck getting them removed.

[fathom]

I would lose sleep over this.

Google
Yahoo
AOL
MSN

are the big four (although target market dependent) to be concerned with and clearly the competitor will not be able to do the same here.

[jeremy goodrich]

If you do some reading on Inktomi, and remember those discussions that got shut down about certain database entries of theirs, you might know that many companies that they used to consider their biggest spammers now work hand in hand with them.

Kind of ironic, isn't it?

So it is entirely possible you didn't find a spammer...but an Inktomi partner :)

[RussellC]

I have never reported spam of any sort before. I just can't believe how blatantly obvious this one is. I mean talking up about 12 of the first 15 search reults with the same page, but different title and description is pretty overboard. I still just might wait it out and see if the sites get removed. I thinkif I play fair then I will eventually move up beyond anything that the spammers can do anyways.

[mattb]

We also have a competitor that has approx. 8 domains registered. They are continually dominating the top 10 - 12 SERPS. The content across the sites appears to be identical but for some reason Google/Ink lets them stay. We've focused our energy on placing our site in the top two. My thinking is if you can get the top 2 and the spammer gets 3 - 10, why not let them stay? You've narrowed your competition down greatly instead of having 5 - 6 companies to choose from, there are now 2.
Just a slightly different angle on the situation. Now if you are buried at 8 - 10, that might be a different story...

[fathom]

A domain name $20 x 8 = $160 per year

Hosting $20/month x 8 = $160 x 12 = $1920

Total $2080 or cheaper than a years advertising in one magazine let alone 8 magzines. Would a competitor be spamming if they placed 8 identical ads in one magazine?

8 sites that look the same visually but coded different can do alot more than completely identical sites.

And 8 site that target different aspects of your overall primary market takes this to a whole new level.

Example: A company that develops science software for public schools is a world away from targeting homeschooling tutors (so now 2 sites)

Both of these don't really focus of the annual science fair but the software adds so much value if students used it for this purpose. (a third site)

Reoccurring newsworthy events around the global such as earthquakes, volcanoes and climate change are all science related but people usually don't associate these event with any of the above categories. The science software is a learning tool that focuses on each newsworthy area (3 more sites).

This isn't spam, this is "penetration into new markets".

A competitor may do this badly, in this instance they are possibly not using their marketing resources wisely. A company that does this wisely will not only get greater returns but can thank the competitor for doing it badly. The associated costs is within any average company's marketing budgets (try targeting 8 global markets with any other medium for $2,000/month).

Marketing is marketing ... and the companies that market wisely get greater returns.

Going back to inktomi ... if a company has the #1 - 10 position on all market keywords this really isn't spamming just poor marketing.

[mayor]

When you report the spammer, be sure your site is squeaky clean (SE's may think it takes a spammer to recognize a spammer lol) or else report them from an autonymous e-mail address.