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Can a competitor get you penalized by Google?

by madison_avenue
8 replies
Can a competitor get your site penalized by Google, by sending you hundreds or maybe thousands of links thereby alerting Google that you may be using questionable tactics to get traffic.

A sudden unexplained spike in your your traffic might put you on Google's radar. Anyone is open to this risk and there is nothing you can do about it because you can't stop sites linking to you. I was wondering what you guys thought about this?
#competitor #google #penalized
  • Profile picture of the author freetraff
    Only Google can give a precise answer to this question.

    But SEO community thinks that - as you do not have real control over incoming links - Google should not punish for tons of *questionable* inlinks.

    The only thing Google should do in this case is to value these backlinks as zero. This is logical, because anyone can junk the site of the competitor like this.

    But this is what we assume Google should do, I would not bet any money on stating that Google does exactly like this.
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  • Profile picture of the author Suzanne Morrison
    I agree - from what I have read, Google shouldn't penalize your website for something that is outwith your control such as links from questionable sites or bought links. The links would just be devalued.

    However, linking to questionable websites or selling links on your site could result in a penalty.

    Cheers
    Suzanne
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  • Profile picture of the author sunnyman
    Yes, this agrees with what I have heard from the *gurus*.

    It also means that if you go overboard building incoming links to your site, Google might decide to ignore them - so your effort is wasted. This happens especially if they all have about the same anchor text - looks un-natural.
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  • Profile picture of the author madison_avenue
    Thanks for your replies guys. Yes I thought it would be logical that you don't get penalized . I am not concerned if there is no benefit to a big spike in links, what I don't want, is to be penalized. If they just discount them that's fine.
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  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    I disagree.

    I know the common theory on this subject but I've seen an seo friend 'test' this theory and the results were not as most people believe.

    Only Google can tell you the specifics involved for how they deal with this.

    Andy
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    nothing to see here.

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  • Profile picture of the author ryanman
    If you are following google terms no one can get you penalized.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jon Alexander
      Originally Posted by ryanman View Post

      If you are following google terms no one can get you penalized.
      and no innocent man ever went to the gas chamber, either.
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    • Profile picture of the author xims
      If you go to google and read from the webmasters help center it says this:

      Can competitors harm ranking?


      There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you're concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don't control the content of these pages.
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