Forum Moderators: phranque
This article shows what is happening now to many of us. Google is having trouble with it too. The claim that it is almost impossible for a competitor to harm your rankings is true. But they say almost, and that means yes, they can, do and are getting away with it.
Search marketers claim they can frame certain competitors as cheaters by posting thousands of links around the Web, making a competing site look like it's engaging in "link spamming,"
[forbes.com...]
In that sense, gibberish sites is a psychological attack more than one of substance.
Link spamming rarely works - and almost never if your own link policy is 100% clean; and in that case, those links can only help your site.
Just make sure that your site is not a "certain site".
It's almost like walking on needles having your site successful in the search results nowadays.. you never know how pathetic your nearest competitor truly is.
Why don't they invest that money they paid somebody to sabotage you, on bettering their product line so they don't HAVE to sabotage you? (If anything, let's hope the people responsible for this dried out their advertising funds so they indirectly lose THEIR sales as a result of this attack) :)
walrus, any idea who it was/is? Are you taking any steps to report the spamming to the search engines to get any penalties lifted? (Is this even possible?)
Why don't they invest that money they paid somebody to sabotage you, on bettering their product line so they don't HAVE to sabotage you?
I don't think it costs very much at all to have someone do a spammy link campaign.
Link spamming rarely works - and almost never if your own link policy is 100% clean; and in that case, those links can only help your site.
Thats the most important thing to remember.
Neither Scott or Duke will say just how much they receive for their sabotage services, though Duke says his base rate is around 3,000 pounds (about $6,000) a day, with extra charges for especially labor-intensive jobs. He cites one assignment, reducing the search engine rankings of a film's negative reviews, which paid in the tens of thousands of pounds.
They're making some pretty good coin at this too. The same applies to being able to uncover it and intervene. :) If you are competing in certain industries, this type of stuff is becoming more and more prevalent as webmasters get technical in their approaches at manipulating the SERPs.
In fact, it's mostly smoke and mirrors; most 'clean' sites would not be at risk from most of those methods. Sites where link buying and exchanging are routine may be at very high risk however.
Also, once the 'victim' became aware of the action, all are defendable, often by using an identical technique against the attacker, else by simply formal complaints.
Plus one or two would very rarely work, and could be very expensive failures.
I'm certainly not saying none will work - having been (temporarily) the victim of two of them - but not for long in most cases, and often a very expensive, time wasting 'blip' - for the attacker.
In practice, I suspect they are used more often for spite than for any conceivable business use.
I'm surprised I missed that when it was first published back on 2007-06-28
It was discussed - here and elsewhere - when it first came out.
Oh my, and I started that topic. Forgive me, I believe I had an early senior moment?
Plus one or two would very rarely work, and could be very expensive failures.
You know, I do believe I may have evidence to suggest otherwise and it is not something to discuss publicly. Its that stuff you save for behind the scenes. All those scrapers, parked domains, arbitrage sites, etc. They all have an effect on the target.
I have an orphan topic that relates to this, and I'm looking for the "Baddest Bad Bot List" to do some further research.
Bad Bot List
[webmasterworld.com...]
And yes, I do utilize Brett's robots.txt foundation. I want to go up to the Firewall level and block there.
[edited by: pageoneresults at 6:11 pm (utc) on Feb. 24, 2008]
and almost never if your own link policy is 100% clean
For the most part it is clean but I have to admit I pushed the limit with similar named pages and slightly different content, as i saw lots in the top ten doing. I started the site as a hobby, theme news and entertainment. By fluke started getting work for a few businesses, so i linked to my site as web designer, and even though my site was primarily entertainment based, it seemed to still get some PR for the links. For 4 years i never had a problem in the serps until this summer. I was trying to provide movies on my site, but no matter what, Host or ISP, neither could solve my timeout problems uploading large files, so i have kind of stagnated.
Recently I created a new site just for web design and services and changed the links on my customers pages to my new site. The next day I had the highest numbers in a year. Thinking that it was to soon to have made a difference i switched them all back that day. So I may have shot myself in the foot again recently too.
any idea who it was/is?
The same applies to being able to uncover it and intervene.
Oh my, and I started that topic. Forgive me, I believe I had a early senior moment?hehe...i'm gettin those too, but i'm only 47.
In practice, I suspect they are used more often for spite than for any conceivable business use.
Thanks for the replies, lots of great advice here. That old thread has some interesting stuff on site maps too.
