Sphinn - Do You Report Your Competitors?

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Do You Report Your Competitors?

Went Hot: May 7, 2008 - 4:34 am
Posted By: gyutae 423 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.searchenginejournal.com)
Category: SEO

By profession we, SEOs, always have to compete. That’s an integral part of our daily routine: we come to work and check how our sites are doing compared to our SERPs competitors. Then we scratch our heads thinking how we can outrank them. And at the same time we need to constantly look out for those new guys that might be aiming at outranking us.

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from SlightlyShadySEO 423 days ago #

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I do not report anyone. Why report them when I can pick their site to pieces, duplicate their tricks, and outrank them?
If G knows about it, it becomes less useful for me as well.

from annie7 422 days ago #

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@Shady: lovin' this comment!

from missenlinx 422 days ago #

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If I was running a site for quick cash or a site which wasn't hugely important i'd duplicate his tricks, but some of my sites are quite large and getting banned from google would hurt my financially.

That being said I would only report them if it was affecting me and was ethically wrong. e.g cloaking etc

from iBrian 422 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

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If SPAM = Site Positioned Above Mine and the only way to outrank competitors is to report them, then it means you probably have a crap site and crap strategy in the first place.

Spam reporting is not a serious long-term marketing strategy IMO, but some people treat it as if it is.

2c.

from KevinCheng 422 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

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I would almost always report them, most probably I have always been working in-house, so I would never get the chance to mimic their tactics with my companies' sites.

from DanThies 422 days ago #

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I reported one a couple years ago, because the site was clearly black hat. Meaning, they were getting rankings for (Person X) because of volume and redirecting to a porn site - XXX, not Person X. Unless they're doing something like that, geez, who has the time - it's easier to just beat them.

from avi 421 days ago #

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This is a great continuation from a thread I started almost 3 years back on SEW (which won thread of the year!) called "How Long Does It Take For Search Engines To Remove Spam Sites?
Interesting to see how things changed from 2005 to 2008.