Competitor spamming search results. Help

[lilbear17]

Hi,

I've been doing my SEO work and have increased greatly in most results on Yahoo, I'm still working on Google.

However, I have a few competitors that have taken search engine spamming to an obscene level. I've reported the worst of these (a company with 10+ sites) to yahoo and google but to no avail.

I'm hesitant to name names here but if you search for "San Francisco Wedding DJ" on either yahoo or google you'll come up with these spammers. (almost any other city name in the area also works as well as many many other related terms)

They use a number of tricks (some of which I regretfully had to incorporate to be listed anywhere near the top results.)... but the worst is that they each have 2-10+ domains with obscenely spammy and or mirror content.

Using the above search on yahoo position 1,2,3,5 and 7 are all the same company with extrememly spammy but mostly different pages (some are mirrors) and position 4 and 8 are another company with mirror domains and position 9,10, and 12 are another company with one main and one spammy result.

There's a couple other companies that pull the same thing but aren't so successful so it doesn't bother me so much. 14. has mirrors (not in these results), 17. has a page redirect on the index to feed the search engines, and 20. among others has many bad doorway pages (again, not in these particular results). There are more but we'll leave it at that.

I managed to work my way in at number 6 despite the spammers but I'd really like to level the playing field.

To fully disclose I have 3 sites. One is the html version of my flash site www.make.st (also my original domain and I'm phasing it out.) two is my flash site for art and events of all types(www.makeproductions.com) and 3 is the site listed www.makeweddings.com which is obviously geared solely towards weddings. Except for the html version of the flash site these are very different and clearly link back and forth because of their varied content so in my opinion this is very different then what my competitors are doing.

Actually, while I'm at it, I was wondering what the legality of cloaking my flash site and displaying the html version to search engines is. The sites are near identical (only different on the opening page due to fancy flash intro) so I'm not feeding deceitful content.

Two other things I'm curious about the legality of are 1. text loaded marquees and 2. doorway pages with real content but content unrelated to the main site. (A good example of this is at number 16 on the above search).

Thanks in advance for advice and suggestions,

Mischa

[rlrouse]

I believe if you keep your own sites clean (and I know its hard when faced with agressive spamming), you'll have the last laugh after they become banned from the index (and it will happen eventually).

The problem is if you resort to the same tactics you'll get hit by the falling branches when Google saws the limbs out the spammer's trees.

All you can do is file a Google Spam Report and let the chips fall where they may.

[lilbear17]

That's why I've avoided super spam pages, mirror sites, doorway pages etc. And that's why I'm wondering about the text loaded marquee and content that's real but not really pertaining to the site.

For instance I put up some pages that have a list of wedding sites in specific areas. (Actually they will soon, but not yet. I'm in the middle of this project.) These relate to my site just in that I'm a wedding vendor. These (theoretically) will help rank my site for certain city names in conjunction with my own search terms of wedding, dj, and photography. Is this considered search engine spam or a doorway page or is this legal?

[jbgilbert]

I believe if you keep your own sites clean ...... , you'll have the last laugh after they become banned from the index (and it will happen eventually).

All you can do is file a Google Spam Report and let the chips fall where they may.

Totally agree, but don't be passive about it -- drive Google nuts about it.

[lilbear17]

So how do I drive google nuts about it? Could I get some help to clean up these results? First could someone comment on search engine legality of above mentioned text in marquee etc. ?

Thanks!

[greeneagle]

Here's the best trail:

1)Report Spam
2)Be patient for the "chips to fall"
3)While being patient continue to improve your own site and increase links.

Spam verification and subsequent delisting and other penalties don't happen overnight. How long ago did you report?

Ken

[lilbear17]

I reported once maybe 4 months ago and then after about two months of waiting I felt like I had to do something because it's hurting business and this is 90% of how my customers find me. So that's when I started using the questionable but not clearly illegal methods (to me at least, and I'd still like some advice on this). I also reported again maybe a month ago. And both times was to both yahoo and google. The first time I detailed all of the various people infringing... the second time I just detailed the worst one of them with the 10+ spam sites who's always got multiple top 10 rankings on almost every relevant search.

[greeneagle]

lilbear17,

You have a nice ALL FLASH Site. However it is incomplete (Portfolio Pages). You are lucky to have a PR4. It is much more difficult to find the higher serps without HTML verbiage on each page and without static text links on each page. That is just plain fact!

In your case you would be better off spending your time finishing your Portfolio pages so everyone can see what you do. In the case of your specific design, you could table space down out of immediate view (just off screen) and add keyword rich relevant HTML content without distracting from your Site's aesthetic value, while presenting some meat for the SEs to byte into (on each page).

IMO - It's always better to "hybridize" between HTML and Flash.

Reviewing GOOGLE linkbacks,,,,,, They show NONE right now. Surely you can find a boatload of local business and music directories to list in!

You have a valuable and easy to remember URL. Tend your own deficiencies and wait for the chips to fall, while strengthening your own position.

That really is the best advice.

Good Luck,
Ken

[lilbear17]

I'm actually much more interested in having the makeweddings.com site show up in the serps then the other.

It's also a much more complete site and the one in which I've implemented the questions I still have unanswered. I've had it up for quite a few months longer and worked on it's SEO quite a lot.

And there are a lot of backlinks listed and many more that exist but for whatever reason aren't listed.

Because the other site is flash I simply have a redirect to a sub page if a user happens on it that doesn't have flash. You can also click on this below the animation spaced down a bit. It's a full copy of the site in html. I also recently copied just the html version onto it's own domain at www.make.st because Yahoo dropped that domain entirely (and then reverted to an old cache) when I implemented the flash.

Anyone have experience with how having flash works in yahoo? I thought it would ignore the flash and index the little bit of html on the page that links to the full html version of the site but this doesn't seem to be true. Google picks up the flash but doesn't enter it (I wouldn't expect it to) and then follows the link and fully indexes the html.

Thanks for all the responses so far!

[lilbear17]

Originally Posted by greeneagle

lilbear17,

Reviewing GOOGLE linkbacks,,,,,, They show NONE right now. Surely you can find a boatload of local business and music directories to list in!

I found 11 when I looked... although I agree I need (and plan on attaining) more.

Weddings are just the majority of my business so I'm trying to get that site www.makeweddings.com where I want it before I really start working on the other.