Competitors' dummy websites --- What SEO (or other?) strategy is this?

[Novos_Jay]

I work for an e-retailer. I've noticed that at least one of our competitors (and, I think, a second as well) has set up a neutral "third party" website that attempts to provide unbiassed information about different manufacturer's products. Of course, their products always win out over the competitor in these comparisons.

But this one site (and another whose corporate backer I can't seem to figure out) is keyworded so poorly, and not branded at all. There are very few (if any) links to the corporate sponsor, or links, period. It's definitely not serving to have "Little Brand x" appear next to "Big Brand Y" in search results, either (again, really poorly keyworded). Other SEO seems really minimal.

What do you think their strategy is? Is it a dumb waste o' money or something really smart that I'm not picking up on?

Your insights most appreciated!

[KevinBudzynski]

I'm guessing that they tried to stay safe as possible and intentionally made the posts only "subtly promote" as I am sure you probably guessed by now.

[Novos_Jay]

Thanks for your help. What I find so weird about this, though, is that the vast majority of the information on the one site (whose backer is known) is not reviews, and only very subtly promotes their products (and then it'll be waayyy at the bottom of a page, for instance). And for the one with the impossible-to-figure-out sponsor, I can't figure out what the point is at all. Clearly it's not brand promotion in this latter case.

Proper, well-effectuated astroturfing (so that's what it's called!) makes sense to me, though it's obviously slimey. But, seriously, it took me a long time to begin to guess that either of these sites were corporately backed, and then longer to figure out who the backers were. It's so strange.

And, nope, definitely not interested in doing this myself. It's so much writing! So much energy! So little point! (Again, unless I'm missing something really major.)

[danrawk]

I'll just add to Kevin's comment - the turfy part of this is that the "3rd party" website probably had terrible metrics, so it's probably not doing much for the target sites ranking.

It's frustrating to see, but don't worry about it too much. Hopefully google algos will eventually catch it. In the mean time, concentrate on building high quality links in relevant areas of interest to your site. Quality links will crush this sort of lameness from competition.

[KevinBudzynski]

It's called astroturfing and is a a dumb o' waste of time. Many companies have been fined for this type of activity. So stay away...