Competitor reporting

[SEOSponge]

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.

[trickshotric]

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.