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Unfortunately, there is nothing illegal about what the competitor is doing. We have dealt with similar issues in the past with some of our clients and have found that the advertiser is not breaking Google's TOS. Technically speaking, the competing advertiser is completely within their rights, especially if the brand they are cloning is not officially trademarked.

This is not to say that it is ethical, however. As a marketer and advertiser I would personally have a hard time doing this myself or justifying my team in doing it. We often bid on competitor's names, but we never try to make it look like we are the competitor.

Is it clever? A little bit. Could it get you a positive ROI? Probably. Is it worth it? Nope. In many industries a strategy like this could destroy a company's reputation or ruin interindustry relationships. Personally, I believe the longterm consequences are not worth the temporary reward.

Hi Karina! This is a little bit of tricky question, simply because there are so many unknowns. It doesn't sound like you're being penalized in any way since you are still ranking a little bit, but just aren't increasing in the rankings any longer. It has been my experience that with older domains, like your hyphenated one, it doesn't matter too much if it's hyphenated or has two words, etc. in it. Usually age trumps all.

If you just want to move your site since you already bought the new domain name, make sure to follow these best practices from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83105?hl=en

However, I would be very happy to take a look at your site for you and give you a better and more helpful response. Just shoot me your website via a private message and I'll do some research for you and get back to you.

Doesn't seem like anyone has mentioned it but, just in case, make sure you have your rel="canonical" tags published properly on every page. Here's a link for more if you need it:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en

This exact same thing has happened to a few of our clients a month or two ago. We were able to successfully return them to higher rankings through a few different efforts:

1. We noticed that their site loaded much more slowly than many of the higher ranking sites. I have noticed the same with yours. Check it out here: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/eCwMbE/http://iddaasonuclari.com/

It looks like your site heavily relies on an api or two (sorry if I'm wrong), but there are many things you can do to speed your site up. A great MOZ resource is here: http://moz.com/blog/15-tips-to-speed-up-your-website

2. In the case of two of our clients they had some bad looking link profiles. I know this is old hat by now, but is it a possibly you were hit by Penguin? If you're not sure, try this tool: http://www.penguinanalysis.com/

The linking for one of our clients also extended to their own site. They had a lot of exact match internal links which when removed with everything else seemed to help some.

3. There doesn't seem to be a lot (or any?) static content on the site. You may want to look into developing content.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

1. This has been helpful to us in the past. Give it a try if you don't mind spending the money on the TLDs. Just 301 redirect them to the .com.

2. Even though it is a web app, do you do any sort of blogging or content marketing? What's the URL of the app?

3. What I mean by this is, have you tried building relationships with press/bloggers/content creators located in the countries/geographies that you are targeting?

4. Glad to help!

I agree with Andy on this one. That resource from Google will be a huge help for you. One thing to consider would be to you might also find some useful answers in this video from Matt Cutts. It is about using different IP addresses for different countries, but there is some other useful info in there pertinent to your issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0k6BBgQgqM

This happened to us once. We were able to fix it by disconnecting our Google Analytics accounts and then reconnecting it. It will take a couple of days to regenerate reports, but all the same data will be there still.

If it is an issue with crawling your site, you may need to delete the campaign and then create it again. Caution: if you do this all your data will be lost and it will act as a brand new campaign.

A few other things you might want to consider:

1. Do you have the country TLDs registered (.au, .co.in, etc.)? Do you have websites at those domains or at least 301ing to your .com?
2. Do you have geographically targeted content? I'm not talking keywords, I'm talking relevant content and topics for the geographies in which your targeting.
3. Have you tried PR outreach in those geographic areas?
4. Do you localize your content (translate to appropriate languages)?

These are four things that have worked wonders for our international clients. Feel free to shoot me back a response or message if you want more ideas or any clarifications. Best of luck!

We use "Inbound Marketing" as well as "Digital Marketing". Ever since I read Ian Lurie from Portent, Inc. comment regarding the term "SEO's", I try to avoid it as much as possible. For us, SEO is one of our many tactics, not our entire marketing strategy.

If it was me, I'd find a reputable marketing firm first, and then see if link building or offsite optimization is one of their marketing tactics of their overall marketing strategy. I wouldn't hire or use a company that solely build links. It might hurt you in the long run.

Hi Karina! This is a little bit of tricky question, simply because there are so many unknowns. It doesn't sound like you're being penalized in any way since you are still ranking a little bit, but just aren't increasing in the rankings any longer. It has been my experience that with older domains, like your hyphenated one, it doesn't matter too much if it's hyphenated or has two words, etc. in it. Usually age trumps all.

If you just want to move your site since you already bought the new domain name, make sure to follow these best practices from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83105?hl=en

However, I would be very happy to take a look at your site for you and give you a better and more helpful response. Just shoot me your website via a private message and I'll do some research for you and get back to you.

Doesn't seem like anyone has mentioned it but, just in case, make sure you have your rel="canonical" tags published properly on every page. Here's a link for more if you need it:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en

1. This has been helpful to us in the past. Give it a try if you don't mind spending the money on the TLDs. Just 301 redirect them to the .com.

2. Even though it is a web app, do you do any sort of blogging or content marketing? What's the URL of the app?

3. What I mean by this is, have you tried building relationships with press/bloggers/content creators located in the countries/geographies that you are targeting?

4. Glad to help!

If it was me, I'd find a reputable marketing firm first, and then see if link building or offsite optimization is one of their marketing tactics of their overall marketing strategy. I wouldn't hire or use a company that solely build links. It might hurt you in the long run.

Unfortunately, there is nothing illegal about what the competitor is doing. We have dealt with similar issues in the past with some of our clients and have found that the advertiser is not breaking Google's TOS. Technically speaking, the competing advertiser is completely within their rights, especially if the brand they are cloning is not officially trademarked.

This is not to say that it is ethical, however. As a marketer and advertiser I would personally have a hard time doing this myself or justifying my team in doing it. We often bid on competitor's names, but we never try to make it look like we are the competitor.

Is it clever? A little bit. Could it get you a positive ROI? Probably. Is it worth it? Nope. In many industries a strategy like this could destroy a company's reputation or ruin interindustry relationships. Personally, I believe the longterm consequences are not worth the temporary reward.