Multiple sites/same business

Is this OK?

[sammyp]

I have noticed that several of my competitors have more than one website. To the buyer they look like different organisations, with different brand names etc, but they are actually the same organisation selling the same product. Under PPC, they are able to hog the top positions, presumably the thinking being if website A doesnt get the business, then chances are website B, or even C will do. Obviously this hacks me off a bit. Is it frowned on by the PPC providers if they realise and do they take any action if they are alerted to it?

[NFFC]

They say they don't like it, reality may be different. Seems a sure fire way for a site to burn money on PPC to me.

[wayne]

Yes, I have noticed this with one of my competitors also.
They have at least four sites that I know of, plus they
use clickbank hoplinks to advertise similar sites. So under
some keywords, they will have 5 or 6 of the top 10 listings.
They do this on several search engines, I notifed Findwhat
about this and they replied that this person uses
several accounts with different billing information on
each account so they can't do anything about it. This
particular person is from Canada, I looked up his dns
information and also got his account details from his
clickbank nickname before they disabled the link to be
able to do this, all have the same street address and
same last name. I got smart about this, since I consider
he is not playing fair, I found out which keywords he had
bid the most on, and make sure I click on some of them
each day. I've noticed he has been lowering some of his
bids lately.

[wayne]

This same person also has 7 out of the top 10 listings
under the same keyword on 7search. I also notified them
about it a week or so ago, but it looks like they are not
going to do anything about it neither. I guess if you
want to dominate the top listings, just get multiple sites
and create a separate account for each one.