Should I report a competitor using "black hat" SEO techniques?

A dilemma! A competitor of mine is getting great results in the search engines, and I finally figured out how. He's loading tons of keywords into a CSS layer and then positioning the layer so that it's invisible. Here's the CSS he's using:

{ position:absolute; left:-100px; top:10px; width:99px; height:400px; }

Can I, should I report him to Google, or is that a bad idea?

Dave's Answer:

Great question because it really is a dilemma: do you possibly create an enemy by reporting search engine spamming / black hat SEO of this nature, or do you let it slide, assuming that Google will eventually recognize the sneaky trick and penalize the other site?

Let's ask Google to see their explanation:

"We work hard to return the most relevant results for every search we conduct. To that end, we encourage site managers to make their content straightforward and easily understood by users and search engines alike. Unfortunately, not all websites have users' best interests at heart. Trying to deceive (spam) our web crawler by means of hidden text, deceptive cloaking or doorway pages compromises the quality of our results and degrades the search experience for everyone.

"We think that's a bad thing, and so we request that, if your Google search returns a result that you suspect is spam, you please let us know by using this form. We thoroughly investigate every report of deceptive practices and take appropriate action when we uncover genuine abuse. In especially egregious cases, we will remove spammers from our index immediately, so they don't show up in search results at all. At a minimum we'll use the data from each spam report to improve our site ranking and filtering algorithms, which, over time, should increase the quality of our results."

So there you have it. Pragmatically should you report the search engine spam? I would suggest that you do report it, personally. If they're doing something wrong, they deserve to get into trouble with the search engine, and if they're costing you revenue because of their sneaky trick, well, they're also costing other competitors revenue too, aren't they? I am all for competition, and even savvy, ingenious competitive approaches, but cheating is just that, and it's never okay.

Now, I should mention that some people believe that Google automatically checks the reporting party's site too, to ensure that they're not in the middle of a "rat 'em out" fight, but I have no reason to believe that this is true and besides, you're clean anyway, aren't you? :-)

Hope that helps you resolve your dilemma.

Categorized: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) (Article 7031, Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: black hat seo, google, search engine spam, seo
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Comments

I must agree that it is only right to report them. It just isn't fair to notice it and let it slide. Should you go on a witch hunt? No - I don't believe so, but since you noticed it it shouldn't go unpunished.

Posted by: Mark B at July 6, 2007 1:48 PM

So, where is the 'form' to report someone?
Thx,
DJ

Posted by: DJ at April 16, 2008 6:08 AM

Report it. Google has a special page to report abuse/spam, etc. for a very good reason.
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Posted by: MRCAS at December 8, 2008 2:14 AM

If black hat has an unfair advantage over white hat then it should be stamped out. Why do they deserve the upper hand? Fight fair.

Posted by: Matt dating at March 15, 2009 12:25 AM

Black hat SEO is equivalent to a “get-rich-quick” scheme. Search engines adhere to strict webmaster guidelines and ethical SEO practices. So if you a competitor is violating search engine rules and copyright policies, they can be reported to the appropriate search engine.

Posted by: Bianca Dun at September 23, 2009 11:41 AM

What if you already reported someone but they continue their ways. If fact, this guy increased his black hat activities.

On a different note, do you think that setting up various (100s) of urls and having them backlink to your main site is considered blackhat? That's what casabyowner.com is doing.

Posted by: joe at November 13, 2009 12:50 PM

Thank you for your post. I found it helpful. I also appreciate the link to the form that I found in one of the comments.

Reading your post brings up a question I have been pondering. In your post, "action" and "search engine" are underlined. When I clicked each of these links, ads for non-related products pop-up. I have seen this in multiple sites on the web. Why is this OK? I am assuming you think it is OK because it is used on your site. I think it is misleading and frustrating.

I look forward to your response. Thank you very much.

Posted by: lori at January 3, 2011 9:06 PM

A fair question, Lori, and thanks for asking it. What you're seeing is contextual text ad links. I run a network called Kontera and it helps generate revenue from my site visitors without having yet more graphical ads appear in their face. It's a definite trade-off: without revenue I couldn't afford the hosting, gear, hardware, and time to keep the site up and running with new content each and every day, but every advert I include means that there's space taken away from additional information or content.

It's a trade-off that every magazine, every TV station, every movie theater, every bus and every online site has to balance. Some go too far in one direction and are loss centers, eventually being dropped as "hobby" becomes insufficient motivation, while others get to have so many darn advertisements that you can't find their content or it's just not sufficient to offset the annoyance of the ads.

I leave it to you to decide where you think my site lands, and hope more for the former than the latter. :-)

Posted by: Dave Taylor at January 3, 2011 10:45 PM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!