Competitor reporting
-
We are in the process of creating customer profiles, conducting in-depth keyword/competitor research, fleshing out a content strategy, addressing old content, meta data etc, and researching sites (particular industry news sites) relevant to our industry who could be sources of authoritative backlinks.
Once we receive approval from the powers that be, we'll start putting our strategy in motion. However, we are looking at SEO efforts as a long-term plan the entire organization understands is necessary.
If our strategy is sound, I would think we'll start seeing results and some competitors will begin to take notice (and action.)
So here is my question:
How easy is it for a competitor to "report" a small/medium size business as breaking Google's rules i.e. could a competitor claim we are scraping their content (or content off of any site for that matter) and anonymously email Google?
I think the answer to that question is "yes."
How closely would Google look into the claim?
We have zero plans on doing anything shady or underhanded but I was wondering if it is a simple process for a competitor to impact our efforts this way?
Thanks for any insight.
-
It is incredibly easy to report a site to Google: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93713
HOWEVER... in my experience, Google rarely react to requests. We have reported a number sites that have clearly been cheating the system (see this recent post http://www.seomoz.org/q/why-is-this-site-not-being-punished a version of this was also sent to Google) but no action has ever been taken.
HOWEVER (2)... Google are getting smarter and smarter... well they have always been smart, they are just applying it properly now. Panda and Penguin were surely just the start... Pelican, Pademelon and Platypus are no doubt on the way.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best competitor analysis tool comparing my links with competitor links?
Hello All, Can anyone tell me best competitor analysis tool comparing my links with competitor links? Tool which define quality of links either low quality or spammy links etc? Thanks!
Competitive Research | | devdan0 -
Screaming Frog for competitor research
Hi guys, Does somebody experienced an issue with Screaming Frog spider while trying to crawl a website? It's weird since no error message appears and at the same time the crawler cannot crawl anything. There is no restriction in the robots.txt. Has someone encountered such an issue? Thank you. Cheers
Competitive Research | | lgrozeva0 -
How to top competitor's article
Hello, For bobweikel.com I'm going to work on getting some natural backlinks by making a better article than http://www.medicinenet.com/weight_loss/article.htm even though they're 30 times more of an authority than me. If you think this is a good idea, how do you recommend I top this thing? I'm just brainstorming
Competitive Research | | BobGW0 -
Moz Rank Moz Trust and Authority higher than my competitor but still getting outranked
Hi There, I'm new to SeoMoz but ive been using it for the past month and I've been using the tools to try to optimize my site but for some reason even though my metrics are showing that my rank and authority are rising past my competitor they still rank higher in the searches. my website is the site on the far left with the domain authority @27. the competitor that keeps outranking me is the third from the left with a domain authority of 12. If anyone can advise as to why I'm being outranked that would be very helpful. I'm stumped here. Thanks guys! eYtMRr9.png
Competitive Research | | SamRaskin1 -
Is there a SEO Moz Competitor Analasys tool that will show me how many Vistors their site receives?
I'm trying to find out how much traffic a competitor gets. Is there an SEOmoz tool for this?
Competitive Research | | starkSEO0 -
Competitor Keyword Rankings
Is there a way within SEOMoz to uncover the keywords your competitors rank for and their respective SERPs? Thx
Competitive Research | | qiherbs.com1 -
How due I take the advanced report that i have exported as a excel file and recreate your online color coded version with the data.
In the keyword difficulty screen how do I recreate your beutiful color coded spreadsheet in the exported excel file based on the advanced reports.
Competitive Research | | bmcfarlane0 -
PA and PD better than my competitors is a way to rank better?
I got a site that stuck in last position of google's first page. My on-page is grade A for this particulary page, i got links for that page too. But My competitors PA and PD is better than mine, not too much, but it is. If i build more quality backlinks and start increasing my PA and PD probaly i will rank better than my competitors? Thats the factor that i have do cara abour now?
Competitive Research | | Ex20