Welcome to the Q&A Forum

https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-rich-snippets#howlong

Q: How long does it take for rich snippets to be visible?
A: Once you've marked up your site's content, Google will discover it the next time we crawl your site (although it may take some time for rich snippets to appear in search results, if we do choose to display rich snippets for your site). If you're marking up your content for rich snippets, you can let us know. Google won't be able to individually reply to your message, but we may use the information you supply to improve our detection and display of marked-up content.

Generate Reviews?

Totally off the top of my head here, but could that have something to do with it? That Google caught on that your reviews were auto generated? (if that is what you mean)

Agree, Call to action is not clear - also design is "blah" with no real thought for UX.

There are WAY to many links in content - thus making it look spammy and affecting readability

No  Design formatting (or care taken) in the content making, it all run together and look like word vomit.

Picture of the guy in right hand corner is a bad pic, off center ect (does not instill the fact that you care or give me trust you are reputable)

You said kick it in the A&*

I have been trying to think of a response for this, as I am confused...

Are you asking how to convert your Black Hat Tatics to White Hat - Or How to Mask Black Hat to look White?

If Black Hat Tactics to White - Focus on putting out great content related to your niche, gaining social signals and building links in a manner that is not just for "Link Acquisition of Anchor Text" - Build a trusted prescece on the web. Focus on building informational long tail queries and building a following of people who think you or your product is interesting. (in very short)

If the latter....

I am not sure this is the right forum for that question, as most of us here spend our days doing things the "Hard' Way" (as described in your question) Due to this IS the longterm strategy - IMHO

Black Hat Tactics in General will never be consistent, cause the latest "fad" will always be rooted out as soon as the masses who follow the "Guru's" who always follow their leader, and latch on and abuse whatever loophole was discovered - Then Google will react - (Circle Ensues)

SEO is still marketing, and the focus always needs to be the consumers - So in general as a Marketing Tactic, black hat is not only un-ethical it is also a loosing strategy in the longrun (as the strategy must consistently change for fear of retribution)

But if you are really only 19 and in this for a few hundred bucks a week..... Then learning and testing to learn your limits as an SEO is important - Just as a suggestion jumping on the Black Hat Train is dangerous not only for you never know what tactic will next week be the new focus of Google's rath. But also consumers in general are becoming more "wise" to webspam and manipulative traffic, thus affecting not only your Search Engine trust, but also consumer trust (which is most important in my opinion)

The old adage "Work Smarter, Not Harder" is incorrect - You must work Smarter and Harder....

Shane

Yeah...

Sorry,

Just cause it has a high moz auth, and is in Google does not make it a "High Quality Link"

I am still with Egol on this, it sounds like manipulation, in theory so subject to risk - So if the ROI of traffic justifies.. go for it, but if this is solely for a "Link" on a "Network"

Still gonna say, it is a... low maybe - probably not at this time. I would personally wait out penguin aftermath to get a little more data on that first.

Shane

PS. Also no matter which way you slice it a 300 word post with 3 links ( 1 link per 100 words) is most definitely a common blog network footprint. Just an FYI

That is currently a pretty loaded question - and I think most everyone has a different take in the current climate.

To make a truly informed recommendation; Quality of content, Linking Practices and amount of posts to be made per week, month ect.. would be needed.

The fact that you used quotations on "network" was correct in my opinion, as it appears this "network" serves a legitimate purpose, as it was explained - so not sure it would be considered a 'Blog Network" which can hurt you and has gotten so much heat from Google over the past month or so.

As if we started classifying everything that links to eachother as a "network" then pretty much the entire web could be considered a network! As in one way or another we all link to eachother in a six degrees of kevin bacon way....

(LOL has anyone every tried to produce a "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon" of linking!

That would be a funny blog post!

As a side note, personally - If you content is really good! I would not put it on another persons site, put it on yours!!!!

Hi,

This link may answer some of your questions about flash, I am in no way a flash expert, but this page does cite the sources (and one of them is dreclty from Google on the matter

http://uxmyths.com/post/717781129/myth-18-flash-is-evil

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html

Presenting the site differently is not an example of malicious or manipulative cloaking, but that does not mean you won't get "lumped" into this category since technically flash in its current form has been indexed since 2008 (per Google's blog)

In my personal opinion, from a UX and search engine standpoint I prefer html php asp - also feel overall they are more forward compatible.

Shane

Are useless, and I think were always "An Old Wives Tale" that they worked (or at least within the past 4 -5 years give or take) (index, follow is default unless specified noindex, nofollow or by other means robots.txt ect..)

is disregarded by Google, but there are still bots out there that accept i believe

Pragma and site verification are for you to decide -

Pragma just tells the individual browser not to cache, and site verification is just for Google Webmaster Tools - which can be done many ways. (.txt, DNS Zone ect..)

Some others are Author, Publisher and Canonical - but especially in the case of canonical - if you do not do it correctly it can really mess with Bots.

Hope this helps

Extra info on Author and Canonical

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/authorship-google-plus-link-building

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

Hi,

I think the issue lies in the original redirect

If you notice the 404 URLS all have the ending extension, then additional items, there would probably be no space here, as this was probably from a previous domain level 301

Also for ones like

redirect 301 "/ 20Sponsored" http://www.mysite.com/   quotations are not necessary, as there appears to be no space.

It is really hard for me to give you specifics - can you PM me a specific URL string that is 404'ing then I will send you the correct 301 expression and we can check that way?

Hi,

I would think not - reason

The Browser itself is not seeing the page due to view source - as all the code IS the basis for the graphical representation. So the same principle applies to bots, View source is only the ability to see it in code, but the code is always available - or the page does not exist.

So I personally would think Bots would not care one way or the other, as long as they can get to it through HTTP queries/responses

Is there a way to disable just View Source, without disabling right click though?

As just from a UX perspective (IMHO) disabling right click is annoying....

Hi -

Those are spaces -

Which in htacess would just be a space - but encapsulate the URL with spaces with "  "

Such as

redirect 301 "/bond_information.htm Surety Bond Information, with FAQ" http://www.mysite.com/

Also i know formatting here is awful, but you need a space between old and new URI's

PS. it is not just the %  ---  %20 equals a space in HTTP resolves

It is situational

301 = Permanent Redirect - and better for SEO purposes as this tells the search engine that the redirected page has become the new page

302 = Temporary - Search engines of course follow the 302, I even think it will show the new page in results, but if it is a permanent, and you are worried about this - then use a 301.

Tough to give any kind of reason for use other than that above without some situational knowledge

But to a user, it is does not matter wheter it is a 301 or 302, but to bots the above differences apply.

And as a 404 I would assume it is a 301 - but not sure, due to I do not know the reason for the 404

For reference

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

I think the answer would be Noindex, but continue to follow - So not by Robots, do by Meta.

Since these pages are just duplicates of others, with little content difference - I would suggest this due to at some point these could begin to drag down the rest of your site - and also they are technically creating competition for your specifically ranked non PPC product pages.

I think Pre Panda/Penguin - the advice might have been closer to keeping them, and targeting them for secondary keywords, but not sure if that strat is really good anymore as it brings too much risk, for an un-known pay off now.

IMHO

Is this traffic that is actually expected to convert?

Then if so IMHO the risk could possibly pay off, as (not sure) but this might be a bad Idea post penguin....

Even though you are not trying to manipulate for rankings - just off the top of my head this seems like a bad idea and possibly a red flag to the algo - especially if done all at once.

I am not fully sure on this, so look forward to others responses.

Since you are actually distributing "Real News" and not just fluff news to target keywords for SEO - I would think "spinning" it would be worse....

But to be honest - It is a hard question to answer - as Technically a press release is not supposed to be posted on others sites word for word --- a press release is to bait journalists/bloggers to write about your story - Only once the days of easy manipulation was it turned into some other type of "link building" strategy.

I would suggest submitting the same one - But with sites like PRweb, it is hard these days to really justify it, as to be honest is it not just a big network to gain links?

IMHO of course

Not necessarily -

Alot of PRWebs high authority distribution network is Nofollow

Also just because it is picked up, does not mean it is not duplicate content - or will not be treated as dup content in the future

Over the past few years I have personally seen a massive depreciation of Online Press Release distribution "White Hat" SEO benefits.

I also am not sure I would agree post Panda/Penguin - that Press releases are a good way to pass "Link Juice"

I am not saying it is a lost cause, but just feel your assesment is a little circa 2009, 2010

Hi,

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1708844

Has information about rel=publisher (for brands and pages) - which is the counter to rel=author (profiles)

I think this is what you were asking

Hope it helps

"Google uses spell checking software to check queries against common spellings of each word. When we determine an alternative query that we think might improve the search results, you'll see "Did you mean: (more common spelling)" at the top of your search results page. For example, if you search for [ foot ball ], at the top of the search results page, you'll see "Did you mean: football," a more common spelling of the game's name. Please note that our spell check feature is completely automated, and we cannot make manual changes to individual queries."

http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1723

So I would say in the case of Businesses, it is still algo based, (no manual interaction available) and predictive based on search volume and alternate queries available in predictive algo and spell check software?

Sounds like you are an excellent candidate for some fun Memes attempting to gain socical traction!

I am not an expert on this plugin by any means - but did you force rewrite? - or manually change in header.php? (or where ever the expression resides in your template) to the correct php expression to correctly re-write the meta?

<title><?php wp_title(''); ?></title>

I know that forcing re-write can have inconsistent results sometimes...

Hope this helps, but not sure

Hi,

others may have a varying opinon, but of course a canonical could be used to clear up any dup content issues while you slowly do the transition, but I am not sure I see the value in this specific situation of keeping both up an running. But I may be neglecting to take something into consideration.

This kind of old, but may help with a few questions http://www.seomoz.org/blog/expectations-and-best-practices-for-moving-to-or-launching-a-new-domain

But personally i would just do everyting i could to make sure I was ready, then just "rip off the bandaid" Keeping both up and running seems it might be setting you up for some confusion in the longrun.

Hmm so it seems it is just an ROI question...

So personally I would put it in those exact terms - What in terms of gains has been seen since the beginning of link building efforts?

Gains in SEO cannot always be monetary, so what is the goal of the site - and how have you helped towards that goal, and how can you show that you directly affected those gains to the goal?

I would not say he is a dumb person, I would say he want to know his ROI, and if you cannot justify the money he is spending to you (not being a jerk, just my opinion) is not showing tangible results in terms of rankings, traffic or increased conversions (or whatever the goal is) then I am not sure I understand what you would be doing for the client?

Totally agree with Zeph, and kind of goes with my statement "not being a jerk, just my opinion" that he may just be impossible to satisfy cause he does not understand his own goals or how to reach them for the longterm.

I have never used it, but to be honest - the builder itself is probably irrelevant due to your specific requirements. As most sitebuilders are exactly the same - they just have different features - so if you find one with all the features you need go with it!

The only variable is if this builder is also the Host - in this situation just make sure you verify its uptime, support and service.

Hope this helps

Personally - with your requirements, you are either going to have to do an in depth search of products that will fit your needs - the closest I would say is Weebly or the like - I really think though with your needs, you will be much better off with a CMS - it is a learning curve, but more control.

Other than that - I would suggest learning coding languages

Sitebuilders are built to be easy, and your needs are sort of outside the realm of a normal sitebuilder user.

It really depends on your preference....

you can most definitely customize the URL with Weebly.... But the language? How do you mean? In page translation? Or the controls of the program in another language?

if you need hosting and the builder - weebly.com is a pretty good choice - there are drawbacks of course to any sitebuilder, and limited HTML knowledge.

But in my expereince if you are not looking for a CMS, just a "drag and drop" builder - weebly is 100000 times better than wix - as you found out wix is HORRIBLE for SEO.

If you are looking for a little more customization - just find a host that offers a sitebuilder - like Fatcow - they offer weebly pro for an additional price AND you have all the FTP abilities to make advanced HTML changes and additions after using weebly to publish the core components.

Learning HTML and becoming very proficient in it, and its counterparts (php asp ect..) is crucial to SEO though...

Hope this helps

Shane

It is, if you paid for it -

Even Google Penalized themselves for it http://www.seroundtable.com/google-chrome-penalty-14543.html

• Technically if you are soliciting a review AND a link and Paying for it ---- by definition this is a paid link and should be No-Followed (not saying you will get caught, but as the rules state, i believe this would be considered a paid or solicited link)

Your site load times - seem good from a UX perspective, so not sure if just a page speed tool is gonna do much for you on the SEO front.

Also just adding social, does not mean it will work

Overall (without really looking into your site at great detail) I would say the "fundamentals" are correct - Just as you said, focus on generating more high quality content relevant to your niche (not necessarily just about grinders)

I think this is one of those tough social niches, as generating buzz about grinders might take some real thought! (lol what the heck is a grinder!) But definitly think you would be in the realm for some whitepapers and technical documents that could get some good pickup in your industry if well written, engaging and informational.

Your name is earthsaver, Is your equipment green? That could be a roundabout route you could take - instead of just trying to talk about Grinders themselves as products.

From a purely SEO perspective - your best friend and associate is research!

http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

PS. Not really a SEO killer - but alot of your scripts and CSS are inpage - this could be why Brent suggested page speed - as having this code adds load time, and it makes it sometimes more difficult on G-bot - but I would not loose to much sleep over it if this is something that cannot be easily fixed at this point (but could become an issue at times of heavier traffic loads)

One thing from a marketing perspective- the Message on the Homepage is not clear, what a grinder is and what it is used for - but I would assume this may be because if you are looking for a used grinder, LOL you probably know what it is!

Look Here -

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986

This goes over the exact methods of getting rel=author to work -

It seems your are trying to connect a Brand Page as an Author - Which is not accepted yet

(I am assuming this, due to Brand Pages only have the link sections you have described)

Make sure your are using personal profile for author - then your brand page would use publisher

The reason is probably -

Giving someone blanket advice that is only partially helpful is not good...

So he waits a week, and has done no research into what may have caused this, what then? Panic?

I would fully agree that panicing is the wrong idea, but so is sitting around doing nothing, as an agency - it is very easy for a person to say - just wait it out, but as a consumer what does that mean - sit around and do nothing, or proactivlely begin researching the possible causes?

So I would think a more correct answer IMHO to someone who is new to the game, would be...

Don't panic, but don't be complacent - Begin researching your tactics over the past years, your link profile your on page seo ect.. so in a few weeks IF it does not "Magically" clear itseld you can have a clear actionable plan to begin responding - two weeks of no money coming in could mean death for a business.... So why would you not begin researching while "wating"

I also do not think the "dust" will settle, this is an ongoing battle, and will be for some time to come - so waiting a few weeks on a site that = livelyhood is not a smart decision either

IMHO of course

The best is not "I told you so" it is a lesson in general, that slow and steady wins the race....

There is some falacy in business that has been perpetuated that the analogy work smarter not harder is somehow true, and a longterm winning strategy.

In most areas of business working harder AND smarter is needed...

and SEO is one of those areas for continued growth, and to alleviate the sleepless nights of worry if that "Last Tactic" will be the straw that breaks the camels back

Not sure if i could have worked in more metaphors in there

Hi,

please back up your .htaccess before attempting

Redirect match might work, but only if you are redirecting all to one - Keep in mind the initial directive needs to be changed to your specific scenario, as well as the destination URL

RedirectMatch 301 ^page.php?id=(.*).htm$ http://www.example.com/content/$1.html

Or you could do it one by one -

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=1$
RewriteRule ^page.php$ http://www.example.com/content/page? [R=301,L]

Or here is a link to a resource (I HAVE NOT TESTED OR USED) but gets lots of good feedback, for helping you make easier work out of hundreds of dynamic redirects

http://www.mbstrategic.com/02/301-redirects-for-dynamic-urls-to-static-pages-with-htaccess/

Hope this helps

PS after a seconf look, your initial attempt might work, you just need a condition which would be similar to

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=1$

Sure;

I am not sure what the incorrect page is, so below is an EXAMPLE ---- if you want to send me by private or on here, both old and new URL's I can complete the code for you

So EXAMPLE WOULD BE;

Be sure to back up .htaccess first !

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine on

Redirect 301 /example/example.html http://www.corect-page.com

Hi,

As Mark says a "Knee Jerk" reaction to a Google "Talking Point" is usually a bad idea in the Search Engine World -  Not saying it is not important to listen to Google, but also have to take what they say with a grain of salt, and understand they have there own business to run with motives ect...

With that being said, Mark is correct - The way you have it is actually good for Search Engines and User Experience - As a consumer (and Search Engine) personally i think it would be better to get someone to the correct, quality non duplicate content "Landing Page" that has specific info for a specific query... Not a generic "Home Page"

So the way you have explained your information architechture, you are on the right path - the key is to just make sure you are not using "manipulatory" tactics to elevate your pages...

But as to what Google's term of the word manipulatory is, i think is opening more and more for interpretation by Google..

Hope this Helps!

Hi,

If needed - this is the .htaccess code to help fix this issue; (Make sure and back up .htaccess before making any chages)

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomainhere.com [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomainhere.com/$1 [L,R=301]

The above code would redirect all traffic from non www to www version of your site fixing dup content issues in that regard

Source ;http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php

PS Spaces between lines not needed (funky formatting here)

Hope this helps

Hi,

I am not sure about time, but most the forums I saw people were wainting over a month -

Google Says

If you think that a sitelink URL is inappropriate or incorrect, you can demote it. Demoting a URL for a sitelink tells Google that you don't consider this URL a good sitelink candidate for a specific page on your site. Google doesn't guarantee that demoted URLs will never appear as a sitelink, but we do consider a demotion a strong hint that we'll try to honor when generating sitelinks.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=47334

I think it is just a waiting game - Or you could probably just 301 that 404 URL to a correct one?? This would probably be the quickest path to resolution

hope this helps

Two ways of looking at this -

Enough from a User Experience point of View is in my opinion, what is needed to convey the message, whether it be with Words, Images or Design Elements. So it is completely dependent

If you are asking from a purely SEO standpoint, I am not sure there is a precise answer, but me personally from experience - if you are building a page you would like to rank well for a specific term no less than 350 - 1000 words - but I think this is completely relative - maybe if you put more about what the purpose of this page is, this might help others to understand what this page is about - and might be able to give a better "best practice" answer, as a page about a specific product would have less than a page explaining the many uses of a product line ect... And putting 500 words on a homepage might be bad for UX , but might be better for SE's - So intent is also a large factor

Hope this helps

Shane

by hit, do you mean de-indexed or just bumped down aggressively?

Cause the ones you gave seem to be affiliate sites, with thin content, and light design elements, so I can definitely see how these could have been devalued.

Here is the reason I am pretty sure it is not a "Hack Penalty"

First, I am not sure that exists - Google cannot interpret if you have been hacked or not, only if their is malicious intent on your site due to or after the hack.

And as to your password being readily available.. anyone could create a site like this, with passwords, and without google going through each page on the web like this, they would not know if it was real or not. (it is also very easy to brute-force or rainbow a commercial host)

This creates a whole new realm for Google as web avenger, as well as SERP integrity protector.

I am just not sure the password release could be involved.

UNLESS!

A penalty was leveraged against justhosts ENTIRE commercial subnet, due to a issue that was caused due to this password release.

But I do not think you or the sites would be singled out due to the password release, only if something bad enough happened that got Google's attention..

BUT then i believe you would be de-indexed, not de-valued.... (blacklisted)

hopefully this opinion was clear as mud

Hi,

There were recently quite a few major changes that affect the way the algorithm looks at common SEO tatctics meant to manipulate rankings, no matter the color of "hat" used.

My personal suggestion to you would be to keep pressing on, creating great quality content on your site - sharing that content in the Social realm - and trying to distribute great quality content to related blog sites.

Keeping in mind the need for a natural portfolio of not only anchor text links, but standard URL links and Brand Links.

Shane

I believe they are coincidental...

I am not sure Google would take action on the entire Subnet range, for a password breach.

I believe it is only when malicious intent is found or suspected, and the release of passwords was not a malicious act in its own.

Check your Webmaster Tools for Malware messages, and see if there are any other messages. As say, you might have just fell victim to the latest round of quality checks from algorithm -  You may have just been bumped -

The idea of first making sure you are protected - then trying to get some fresh content and social signal/links is probably the route I would take.

Shane

Hi,

In regards to google, I think the best source of determining this would be Google

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79812

To answer your question though, Google states it should be

There could be other search engines who prefer it the other way, but switching it around in my opinion would not help with rankings or keywords anymore than

the

Now Bulloogle.com, that is something I can get behind

all BS all the time, you never know what you will get!

Never Seen BS tags before, is that a way to rank higher in Vanoogle?

I would not sorry

I am a convert, I like the way search is going. of course there are gonna be bumps along the way, but I think the social integration is a better way to connect people. We have already shown our predisposition to loving this mentality of online communitites, so i think this is just another stepping stone to the new social "It"product.

I also like geolocation, I think as an SEO/Internet Marketer it makes my life more confusing and more confusing to clients/employers, but as a general user I think it is definitely on the right track to helping people get with local resources, as well as brands, which i thinks makes for a more informed consumer.

just my 2 cents

My Initial Reaction with all the new reports and studies coming out on the Importance Social going forward -

Would be to say the Social Benefits, heavily outweigh the loss of PR to external sites..

But then again, also in PR as I understand it, the difference between .0001 and .001 in PR CAN be huge in the determination of placement..

So I think it is a give and take....

But both positions cannot be ignored **NOW  **BUT I most definitely agree that Vinnie's take on it is a more longterm approach, than hoarding page rank...

Hi,

Looks like you might have already figured it out cause it redirect properly?

www.organic7thheaven.com/products/deepcleansing/miraclemud.asp

Redirects to

http://www.7thheavennaturals.com/products/deepcleansing/miraclemud.asp/

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently => Connection => close Date => Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:39:22 GMT Server => Microsoft-IIS/6.0 X-Powered-By => ASP.NET X-AspNet-Version => 2.0.50727 Location => http://www.7thheavennaturals.com/products/deepcleansing/miraclemud.asp Cache-Control => private Content-Length => 0

But the code would be (All one line formatting here is bad)

Redirect 301 /products/deepcleansing/miraclemud.asp http://www.7thheavennaturals.com/products/deepcleansing/miraclemud.asp/

If you used the code

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.)yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://yournewdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

SInce it appears you have the same directory structure, then technically this is a chain redirect, even though Google says this is "okay" it is preferred to do it page by page.

Shane

Make sure and back up you .htaccess before making any changes...

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*).asp$ $1.php [R=301,L]

Would convert all asp to php

but this would only work if you kept your directory structure the same

Example

Old Structure http://www.somedomain.com/about.asp

New Structure http://www.somedomain.com/about.php

If you did not you will need to do it manually for each page

Redirect 301 /about.asp http://www.somedomain.com/about-Us.php

If there are spaces, be sure to use quotes

Redirect 301 "/about us.asp" http://www.somedomain.com/about-Us.php

There could be other easier ways, but if I read correctly above, this would be my suggestions

And of course as TIm suggests above, the proper SEO process would be manually for each page, redirecting to its proper counterpart (if it is indexed, and has links pointing to it or a User Experience page)

Shane

Of course below is just my opinion... But it seems highly plausible...

Everything we do leaves a footprint, that footprint is analyzed by the algorithm - The algorithm has flags both ways with unnatural links. Either done by you - or against you...

I think this has always been one of Google's biggest challenges,not always necessarily how to penalize site owners and SEO's who are actually using Black hat - but how do you filter that against having black hat done against them algorithmically ?

The reason some claim it work, is I am sure there ARE ways to do it... But as ipositions **excellently ** points out.. This money could be much better spent employing strategies that not only help your search positioning, but your overall brand perception and marketing in general. Opposed to just hurting someone else to make yourself look better (sounds like politics!)

Shane