5 replies to this topic

[DWFallon]

I have been monitoring one of my company's biggest competitors using Google Alerts for some time now. Recently, I've noticed that they've been getting a lot of strange links. Blogs that usually have nothing to do with their product have been linking to them in short, off-topic posts.

I suspect our competitor is buying links. I've had the opportunity to buy links myself and turned it down because I felt it wasn't ethical.

Now I'm wondering: is linkbuying good practice? If it is not, should I try to do something to stop my competitor? Does Google solicit alerts that a website is linkbuying?

[Jill]

Google asks you to turn your competitors in to the Google Police via your Google Webmaster Tools account.

It's really a personal decision as to whether you want to go that route.

[qwerty]

Whether or not you report them is completely your call. I've probably averaged less than one reported site a year during the time I've been in the business, and in most of those cases I gave the search engines time to find some obvious spamming on their own. When they didn't, I reported the sites. Just last week, however, I recommended to a prospective client that they report one of their competitors.

None of these reports were for paid links, for what it's worth.

If you've been keeping an eye on the site, I suppose you've noticed whether it looks like those links are making a difference. If they aren't, it may be because Google is treating them like paid links and refusing to give the site any benefit from them. If that's the case, it would mean your competitors are spending their money for almost nothing.

[DWFallon]

Thanks Jill and Qwerty,

I have been keeping an eye on the site and the additional links don't seem to have helped them this far. But it is still a new initiative on their part so I wasn't sure if there would be a longer-term benefit to them.

I will keep an eye on them to see if they keep this up.

Thanks,
Dave

[Randy]

I have been keeping an eye on the site and the additional links don't seem to have helped them this far. But it is still a new initiative on their part so I wasn't sure if there would be a longer-term benefit to them.

I hope they're not counting on any benefit, because chances are they won't get one. Not with the kick Google is on to spot and discount paid and/or dodgy links lately. While it might seem like it would be easier for a person to intuitively spot dodgy stuff like this, just as you have, it's actually easier for them to spot programically. They wouldn't need nearly as large a sample size to detect it and raise a red flag. Even if the red flag is simply an indicator for a real person at the Googleplex to go have a personal look.

FWIW, it's entirely possible your competitor has nothing to do with what you're seeing. I've had competitors before trying to hire blog spammers to bring my sites down because they'd been trying to climb above me for years to no avail. Too bad for them that doesn't work either, because the engines do in fact understand that links pointing to your site from other non-affiliated, non-compensated sites are completely outside of your control.

<edit to add>

re: Paid Links and other things, this little talk from Matt Cutts might help. The touches on the subject of how easy it is for them these days to spot paid links and/or links that just don't make sense because they've been conditioned to do so. Among other subjects. The advice for smaller sites trying to compete with big brands is a good answer. And I personally loved the story about the first spam he saw. Especially that he freely admits their PR/Link algos could/can actually be fooled.

The above was an interview for German webmasters, but almost all of the answers apply to any other country, or someone going after the worldwide market. Lots packed into 10 minutes.

Edited by Randy, 18 July 2008 - 12:36 PM.

[torka]

When I saw similar blog post links showing up for one of our major competitors, I reported... the blogs that were hosting the paid links.

I figured, as Randy pointed out, there's no way of telling whether my competitor bought those links, or whether it was one of our mutual competitors trying to either damage their reputation (some of these blog posts were seriously lame) or hurt them in the SERPs.

But one thing for sure was that the bloggers in question were selling the links. And not no-following them. Which is a serious no-no according to Google.

Figured that way it didn't matter who bought the links.

--Torka