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April 8, 2008

How To Penalize Your Competitor's Site in Google

Juicy title, isn't it? Well, that is the topic of discussion at a WebmasterWorld. A senior member decided to post some generic, not specific examples, ways to hurt a website's Google rankings. Here are some of the methods you can take:

  • Inbound links from "bad" places.
  • Hundreds of links from one IP address.
  • Duplicate content (a) from competitors scraping your entire site and creating their own from it
  • Duplicate content (b) from competitors stealing your articles and submitting them to article submission services
  • 301/302 redirect hijacking (after all this time it STILL happens!

Yes, there are many other ways to do this. Can it happen to your site. I am told it can. Can it happen to a site that has years and years of authority? Hard to believe, but people say yes. Can it happen to an Amazon like site or a Wikipedia? I doubt it is achievable.

The member also added that there is a new method to harm a site's ranking in Google, but said he couldn't give those details:

There is a new one that is very quick to work using 301's that I daren't put in here but a black hat "associate" of mine said she's dropped quite a few of her client's competitors within days!

Watching Google's most recent language, they seem to have moved from saying it is impossible for a competitor to hurt your rankings. Here are some past articles on it, but the language seems to be changing from words that symbolize "impossible" to words like "almost not possible," "very unlikely," and so on.

I use to not feel that this was a major issue or an issue most webmasters should have a valid reason to worry about. I am not convinced that this is no longer an issue for webmasters.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

posted rustybrick in Google Optimization at April 8, 2008 7:56 AM Comments (3)

• Google Co-op Cartoon Barry

Comments

There is no possible way you can't influence another site in a bad way if you can do it to your own. Google is on the pipe.

 

Posted by Russell Page at April 8, 2008 17:04

Someone should sue them good and hard so they start focusing on their search business again rather than all the c**p they've been trying to develop lately. It'd probably also help if their employees realized their stock options were over valued to start with so they stop trying to keep up.

 

Posted by sam I am at April 8, 2008 17:44

If someone duplicates your entire site and creates their own from it; that is an instant Ban for the copied site for-life from Google. The domain used to host the copied content will be blacklisted.

I think people under-estimate how complex Google's Algorithm is.

Please read Google's Webmaster Guidelines - will provide food for thought.

However competitors stealing your articles and submitting them to article submission services is entirely different. They do not have the multi-billion dollar network infrastructures or complex systems to detect copyright theft.
In-conclusion they are guaranteed ways in which one may indeed “Penalize a Competitor’s site in Google – but not by any of the methods listed in the bullet points in this article.

 

Posted by Rob Abdul at April 9, 2008 04:44

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