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My Competitor is Link-Building by Hacking Other Sites

by brianflannery
5 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I was checking out a competitor's backlinks and found he had thousands of links from random websites all around the world. All of the links are hidden in sneaky parts of the webpages. It seems like he is hacking into these sites and injecting his links.

It's a very successul technique for him because he is ranking #2 for the main niche keyword.
His site is low quality and his content is all scraped and reworded with an automated tool.

What should I do about this? Report it to Google?
How do I go about doing that? Will they take action on it?
#competitor #hacking #linkbuilding #sites
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Report it and move on. That's all you can do.

    Google may look at your report. It may get ignored. No way to know for sure.

    You can also try contacting the webmasters to let them know their sites have been hacked, but that will be very time consuming.
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    • Profile picture of the author brianflannery
      Where do I report it? To google's spam report tool?

      I'm shocked that a website can get away with this kind of strategy,
      I guess google aren't very good at detecting it.
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by brianflannery View Post

        Where do I report it? To google's spam report tool?

        Yes.

        You could also try to make a show of it if that doesn't work and Tweet someone like Matt Cutts or make a post about it in Google's Webmaster Forum. See if it gets any publicity and picked up on that way.
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  • Profile picture of the author online only
    Are you sure they ain't something similar to SAPE links?
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    • Profile picture of the author brianflannery
      Originally Posted by online only View Post

      Are you sure they ain't something similar to SAPE links?
      No, I'm sure the owners of the sites are not aware the links are there.
      The links are very small and hidden by blending the color with the background.
      Also, there's other spammy links along with them to sites selling viagra etc.
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