Google has a lot of spam to battle and some acting against The Guidelines get away with hogging multiple page one spots with their multiple sites. I’m sick of it. How angry would you be if your client with their single site is going up against four sites getting the love from Google but they’re all owned by the same company?
There are HUGE flags that give these kinds of jokesters away. After seeing multiple clients going up against this kind of spam, I wanted everyone to be able to discover if you’re getting beat out on the first page by 10 companies or by one company owning several sites. Below is how to find them AND what you can do about it.
First, let’s look at what Google has to say about the issue:
Alright, Google dislikes pages, subdomains, and domains with substantially duplicated content. Got it.
The next item taken right from Google Support is that users should “Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
COOL. Now that we’ve got Google’s take on things, lets starting digging into how to uncover competitors using multiple sites & getting away with it.
1. URL Structure
Easy way we found someone doing this in the health industry was looking to see their product identification numbers. If there are two results that have the same product number in the URL, it could be coincidence. If there are four results in the top ten results that have the same number, your competitors are eating your lunch. If you see something similar to the URLs below coming up for your top products, I’d start raising that red flag.
http://www.samplesite1.com/contacts/lens-406.asp
http://www.samplesite2.com/contact-lenses/lens406.asp
http://www.samplesite3.com/lenses/lens-id406.asp
http://www.samplesite4.com/contacts/product406.asp
While this should be easy to catch, we’re still seeing multiple companies get away with it.
2. On Page Duplication
Whether it’s title tags, meta descriptions or page content, it’s easy to spot competitors using duplicated material. I’d set up a Google Alert with a lengthy sentence from competitor privacy policies to see if other sites start showing up. You can also grab the bottom disclaimer that goes on every page to keep track of when they launch new pages/products.
3. Check MajesticSEO
Sites that are controlled by the same company typically have a similar backlink profile. When looking at the most recent company screwing with rankings in my client’s industry and see the chart below, this is a dead giveaway.
4. Gratuitous Reviews of Identical Numbers
Do some of your competitors have the same number of reviews for the same product? Two competitors having the same number of reviews (over ten) can absolutely be coincidence, but when four sites have the same number of reviews (say…15 each) and they’re all painstakingly positive, you know what’s going on.
I checked Amazon & eBay to see the last reviews I left said “Came in on time & as described. Would do business with again. Thanks!” and “Came in great condition & packaged really securely. Thanks!” These were positive reviews where I gave realistic feedback. Some of the reviews I read recently had review titles that said things like:
“Product is Awesome!”
“…nothing like it!”
“WOW!!!”
“Simply Amazing”
…and my favorite, “MAGICAL! BEST THING SINCE MICROWAVEABLE POPCORN.”
You’d leave (or shout in all caps) those kinds of reviews for eyewear, right? No?
5. Duplicate Credit Builders
Having VeriSign, McAfee & Money Back Guarantee badges on your site can help build confidence in the site, increase conversion rates, etc. But if all of your competitors happen to have all of the same confidence builders, in the same order, that say the same thing, I’d pick that out as one competitor with multiple sites. Hard to believe? Images below.
Site A:
Site B:
Site C:
Site D:
Slightly similar? Try identical. Sites are still getting away with this type of laziness when creating multiple sites. This is possibly the easiest way to figure it out.
6. Identical Commented-Out Text In Code
Instead of taking out seasonal links every year, an easy way to get rid of them is to just comment them out, then make them live again when the season rolls around. If your competitors have the same commented out text across four sites with the same URL structure, Google’s turning a blind eye to that single competitor beating you up after school.
7. Duplicate Image URLs
Just as the first check was the URL for the product, competitors can get lazy & use the same URL structure for their images including calling them all the identical name.
http://www.samplesite1.com/heels/assets/ProdStandard/J09.JPG
http://www.samplesite2.com/heels/assets/ProdStandard/J09.JPG
http://www.samplesite3.com/heels/assets/ProdStandard/J09.JPG
http://www.samplesite4.com/heels/assets/ProdStandard/J09.JPG
Something fishy going on here or did the ever-so-common J09 name jump into the minds of multiple people at multiple companies?
8. Breadcrumb Structure
If product pages four levels deep all have the same linked breadcrumb structure word for word, either there is no room for naming errors (which could really happen in some industries) or your competitors quickly set up duplicate sites.
OK! Enough! You’ve told me eight ways to find my competitors beating me up. What do I do about it?!?
Google provides one simple thing to do when you find spam in their results.
I’ve used the form with very little success. It’s one form for the entire internet, so there’s a good chance things are backed up or filtered into a priority list. Pretty poor single solution.
You can try hitting Matt Cutts on Twitter. Checking right now, he’s @ responded to 20+ people within the last 24 hours. Not sure how many people he’s DM’d or emailed, but if your business is in survival mode, this is certainly a possibility.
Would you post about the violator in Google’s webmaster forums?
Beyond that, there are some very debatable tactics in terms of “snitching” on a website. Is it appropriate to out a site using multiple sites on an industry forum? Anonymously do it through a tumblr account? Resort to blackhat tactics or try to spam/hack a site (not condoning this at all, karma is a killer & so is a legal mess)? Many of these items were discussed recently in a back & forth twitter conversation between Rand & Aaron Wall.
There is no set process, but if your biggest win can be achieved by ousting a competitor violating Google’s guidelines, you’ll find the right way to get the violator in front of the right people who make the decision. Are you loyal to your clients or some unwritten spam silence code of the SEO world? I don’t know about you, but I know it’s clients that pay our bills & that’s where my loyalty stays. What would you do?
