SE Internet fraud question...

Talk about unethical!

[akaTigger]

This requires a set-up, so please bear with me...

Before the company started taking our website seriously, a salesman, looking to boost commissions, put up his own site (in addition to the corporarte one). When we revised the corporate site, he was asked to take his down, but because the rankings where good he kept the URL active and we linked it to the corporate site.

I just found out the salesman has left the company. His URL is still active and shows up in searches with our corporate name and description BUT the page now is a mini-site for his new employer (one of our competitors)!!

What is the best course of action here? Do I contact the SEs, explain the circumstance and ask they change the link to our URL (thus keeping the rankings)? Ask that they remove the listing completely, claiming fraud? Or speak to our lawyers and demand that the ex-employee remove the listings or be prosecuted for fraud?

Has anyone else come across such blatant unethical behavior? Geez!!

Thanks.

[Brett_Tabke]

I'm sorry to hear of your troubles. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it goes on, all the time.

Get screen shots and save the source code. Don't do anything else but call the lawyers.

[dwedeking]

Here's a twist on this and may not apply to this very situation. Isn't it his (the former employees) right to decide what is on the domain (based on if he retained ownership of the domain). As long as the site has changed and doesn't contain the company name in the URL then it would be up to the domain owner where the traffic goes. Another example, you have a domain that you as a SEO purchased to send traffic to a customer (www.cool-widget-url.com )and then the customer decides not to use your services. Since you have rankings for this site, you could change the information on the site (product names, all reference for the previous company, graphics, etc) and then just sell your services to a competitor. Obviously you would have to request changes in directories for the company name in the listing, but in the next spider the other changes would take care of themselves.

[Brett_Tabke]

That is a different situtation Tigger. I had assumed the domain name was still held by the corporate parent?