Can competitors hurt your rankings?

doogers · 07-15-2007, 09:13 PM

It seems very possible for a competitor to submit your website to thousands of article directories or do illegal link building with your website to make it look like spam. Is there any way to stop this from happening? Does it even happen at all?

tdd1984 · 07-15-2007, 09:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by doogers

It seems very possible for a competitor to submit your website to thousands of article directories or do illegal link building with your website to make it look like spam. Is there any way to stop this from happening? Does it even happen at all?

Yes its possible, but I wouldn't worry about it to much, anythings possible I mean your competitors can do anything, but you'll be ok, but then again depends on who you make mad lol, but for the most part you should be alright

zagu060807 · 07-16-2007, 12:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by doogers

It seems very possible for a competitor to submit your website to thousands of article directories or do illegal link building with your website to make it look like spam. Is there any way to stop this from happening? Does it even happen at all?

Yes, they may submit your website to article directories. Some would describe your website as a "bad" website.

doogers · 07-16-2007, 12:44 PM

"Yes, they may submit your website to article directories. Some would describe your website as a "bad" website."

What do you mean by this Zagu?

phlash2k1 · 07-16-2007, 01:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by doogers

It seems very possible for a competitor to submit your website to thousands of article directories or do illegal link building with your website to make it look like spam. Is there any way to stop this from happening? Does it even happen at all?

I don't believe it is possible. The main reason is that you have to link to them (give approval to the site). If they have a one way link to you, I wouldn't worry about.

janhvizdak · 07-16-2007, 01:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by doogers

It seems very possible for a competitor to submit your website to thousands of article directories or do illegal link building with your website to make it look like spam. Is there any way to stop this from happening? Does it even happen at all?

If you have both, quality and poor links, then your positions can't be damaged. If you have spam links only, then you probably don't have good positions anyway...

coolguy27 · 07-16-2007, 02:27 PM

Yes, definitely lot's of competitors want their site to be ranked some of them do all their efforts to be ranked even spamming...

drpepper · 07-16-2007, 02:37 PM

its posible.. competiitors will do whatever it takes to be on top...i mean, for some..

doogers · 07-16-2007, 02:43 PM

So there is no way to protect yourself? Also, I have many quality links, but I was told that article submission can hurt you. Jan was saying that bad links will not hurt you if you have good links.

Janna122003 · 07-17-2007, 01:17 PM

There's no ways to stop your competitor from hurting your site. You just need to do your best on what you think is right. Every webmasters want to rank their site on top some would do bad tricks and some would do what they think is right.

Cornbread · 07-18-2007, 01:38 PM

This has been brought up before and Matt Cutts, who works at Google said basically that you can't be hurt by sites that link to you. Google understands that who links to you can't be controlled by you. If they are spam fests then they will just be devalued, or ignored. Who YOU link to is what is important. As long as you only link out to quality web sites that have a similar topic as your own you will be fine. If you have a links page make sure it is not a spam fest and ensure it is filled with sites that would benefit your readers.

littlephoenix · 07-18-2007, 01:54 PM

i think your site can be hurt if you have to many bad linkfarms linked to your site, but again this is questionable.

Cornbread · 07-18-2007, 02:31 PM

Again, NO, this is what Google says about it:

Q: I’m worried that someone will buy links to my site and then report that.
A: We’ve always tried very hard to prevent site A from hurting site B. That’s why these reports aren’t being fed directly into algorithms, and are being used as the starting point rather than being used directly. You might also want to review the policy mentioned in my 2005 post (individual links can be discounted and sellers can lose their ability to pass on PageRank/anchortext/etc., which doesn’t allow site A to hurt site B).

In other words the links will just be discounted, but it won't hurt your site.

littlephoenix · 07-18-2007, 03:33 PM

o good , thanks for that cornbread, if thats comes from google then its good for me