Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Reporting "cheating" sites to Google = no tangible results!

I carry out SEO for a small country hotel in the UK and one competitor site regularly comes up for "****** country hotel". My client is on the first page too but sits below them.

Anway having checked the competitors page numerous times I see their web page makes use of hidden links.... I appreciate it is making use of the hidden text links as it's "visibly apparent" links use javascript which as we all know can cause Google bots some difficulty in crawling. Still in my book its not on to hide links with a "spacer" gif as this website obviously does.

Why not just use a text based sitemap???

What really annoys is that having reported it to Google twice now nothing seems to have been done... it still sits at the top for rankings... if Google is made aware by a report then really should it not take some steps? Or are they aware of who the person/organisation is that makes the report and their standing in the SEO community? Or I am just going slightly paranoid????

I ensure my client site stays as "legal" as possible in Google's eyes and its still outranked by a site clearly (or hidden - depends how you see it!) going against the grain - well in terms of on page optimisation anyway... what gives Google?

Cheers

ukdaz