7 replies to this topic

[ABK]

Hi,
My website is ranked #3 in Google for the keyword I'm interested in. The first 2 websites belong to a competitior that is doing extensive "black hat". For months and months I'm trying to get in front. I have better content, natural links and lots of traffic and more important I'm not using any "black hat" because is a corporate website and I can't risk it.
Using a tool to compare the links I saw that this guy is incresing the IBL's in a mathematical manner every month. So in terms of IBL his website has more than mine.
Now an interesting thing is that Google "smelled" somtehing and threw back my competitior's website that was ranked #2. In couple of weeks, the same website (content, URL, etc.) but this time with the .NET extension (first was with .COM) appears on #3. I guess he redirected all his IBL's to this new website.
Maybe it is hard for you to follow my entire story but please bear with me a little more
My website is ranking #2 in Google. Couple of days ago, my competitor's website that was dropping in Google came up again on #2 pushing my website on #3.
So on #2 has the .COM version and on #4 the .NET version. All the links in his #4 website are pointing now again to his #2 website.
All this makes me think that Google is not so smart because this guy is "playing" with his websites for more than a year now.

What do you suggest to do taking into consideration that this is an online business that generates sales? Based on "Click by slot" table #1 in Google takes about 25% clicks, #2 about 7% and #3 about 5%.

Thank you.

[qwerty]

You can report them if you want. Some people tell me that Google actually pays attention to reports that are made through the Webmaster Tools, although I'll believe it when I see it.

For what it's worth, it sounds like they're desperately trying to find a way to stay ahead of you while you continue to steadily build your business. What you're doing is going to keep your business around for a long time, and what they're doing is trying to stay ahead of the algo for as long as they can.

[ABK]

Yes this guy is trying to take full advantage of his placements but as I told is happening for over a year. It's very frustrating, I spend money on payed advertising in all major SE's to boost my sales and this guy only does "black hat".
Also regarding IBL's. I have links from related websites with PR 5 and higher and his websites have IBL's from low PR (1 to 3) and non-related websites. This also makes me think that Google takes into considaration the volume and not so much the quality of the link.

[qwerty]

Google takes both the quality and quantity of links into account, but don't fall into the trap of judging quality by toolbar PR. PageRank is one factor in determining the quality of a page, but we don't have access to real PageRank. Toolbar PageRank is at best an estimate of what the page's PR was at some point within the past couple of months.

Then there are factors like the anchor text of the link, the text surrounding the link, the number of other links on the page...

[ABK]

Yes I know that the toolbar PR is the right one or the most accurate. But I was monitoring my competitor's IBL's for long time and 90% of them were and still are PR0 and PR1.
Also as you know is pretty hard to convince most of the webmasters to put up your link, even if you want to make a link exchange, and not take into consideration the toolbar PR. They will say "OK my website has a PR7 and your website is only PR4!" etc. etc.
Now, back to my problem, you suggest that the best option is to report to Google than wait and see?

[Jill]

See the pinned thread in this forum with the search engine contact emails.

[chrishirst]

and does this one keyword bring in more sales/conversions than any other ??

[ABK]

Yes this is the "main keyword" that generates sales.
A large amount of sales is also generated by "long tail" because of the sheer number of terms and expressions.

It looks that one of my competitor's websites, the one with the .COM extension, was dropped by Google on page #4.
I don't know if this has somethinig to do with me reporting this guy or is just a simple coincidence. The other duplicate site, with the .NET extension is on #3 though.
For now I'm back on #2 so I have to wait and see.