Competitor ranking well with duplicate content—what are my options?
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A competitor is ranking #1 and #3 for a search term (see attached) by publishing two separate sites with the same content. They've modified the title of the page, and serve it in a different design, but are using their branded domain and a keyword-rich domain to gain multiple rankings. This has been going on for years, and I've always told myself that Google would eventually catch it with an algorithm update, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Does anyone know of other options? It doesn't seem like this falls under any of the categories that Google lists on their web spam report page—is there any other way to get bring this up with the powers that be, or is it something that I just have to live with and hope that Google figures out some day?
Any advice would help. Thanks!
how_to_become_a_home_inspector_-_Google_Search_2015-01-15_18-45-06.jpg
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Yeah, I don't really like the 'theory' I listed, but sometimes you aren't left with very many options. If a business has been trying to go out it organically for as long as the OP has, then maybe it is time to consider something farther outside the box.
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Ray's advice, while a little devious and maybe a touch shady, is likely what I'd suggest as well. Nothing worse than being outranked this way.
Also:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreportform?hl=en
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Well, this is unfortunate to have happen - and really hard to look at as an SEO. It puts you in a tough position.
The content is obviously duplicate, they don't even bother to update the brand name in much of it, nor the meta data and other on-page factors completely.
They are hosted on the same account, same IP address.
Their NAP is the exact same.
They even share Google Analytics IDs. Maybe someone knows why this stays out of sight of the algo updates, but I'm not sure.
In theory, you could purchase a keyword rich domain, copy their URL structure, and copy their content. Then see if that website ranks in the SERPs. if so then I would do it with 8 more websites and dominate the SERPs. Once the page is spammed full of the same content, Google should catch on and penalize all the sites. All the new duplicate sites should be on a different web host than your primary domain. Just a theory though...
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