Companies Offer to Damage Your Competitors Search Engine Rankings

Search Engine Roundtable

::: THE PULSE OF THE SEARCH MARKETING COMMUNITY :::
A well-rounded view on search engines and search engine marketing by senior members of the major SEO/SEM forums on the Internet.

1. Companies Offer to Damage Your Competitors Search Engine Rankings - 2007-06-27 07:57:31-04
   

   A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has discussion about a service one member was offered.

   In short, the service is composed of two offerings:

   (1) Damage your competitor's search engine rankings
   (2) Protect your own search engine rankings

   They use threats in their email marketing message, such as "Pay up or have your forum spammed!" and "Your forum will be spammed in the next few days" and then "Pay up to this url or have your forum heavily spam."

   What should you do if you get such an email? Forward it to Google or let me know.

   But seriously, all you need to do is "just hit the delete button," as forum administrator, Robert Kerry said.

   The big question is, can a competitor hurt your rankings? We discussed this most recently in August 2006 and October 2006. I mentioned that Google has a FAQ that addresses just that.

   What can I do if I'm afraid my competitor is harming my ranking in Google?
   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.

   "Almost nothing" are the words used here, so technically, it is possible.

   Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

   

   
   
   
2. Google Adds Rounded Corners Option to AdSense Ads - 2007-06-27 08:16:19-04
   

   Was Google AdSense a bit too square for you? Well, now you can opt for rounded corners.

   The Google AdSense Blog announced two types of rounded corners. The first is "slightly rounded corners" and the second is "very rounded corners."

   Here is a screen capture of the new feature in the AdSense publisher console that enables publishers to select the roundness of their ads.

   

   And here is a "very rounded corners" ad, that is live:

   So far the feedback in the forums are very positive towards this new addition and element of control. There is only one post with feedback on the impact on earnings, but I won't quote that until we get some more feedback from a larger set of publishers.

   Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

   

   
   
   
3. Frustration Over Google URL Removal Tool - 2007-06-27 08:49:09-04
   

   In mid April, Google released a new way to remove content from Google. Since then, people have been using it but there has been a lot of confusion on how it works and doesn't work.

   A Google Group thread has dozens of posts with questions on why pages they remove, still appear. Or why it may take so long to remove a page.

   Due to that, Susan Moskwa, of Google Webmaster Central, promised clearer instructions on the Google URL removal tool and also provided more details on what you should do to remove content from Google's index.

   I'm sorry that you've been frustrated by the URL removal process! Just to clarify, here's what's required in order to get a URL successfully removed:
   
   If you want to remove an individual file (a web page, an image, etc.), you can do any one of the following:
   -Make sure that the URL returns an HTTP 404 or 410 status code
   -Block the URL using a meta noindex tag
   -Block the URL using a robots.txt file
   
   However, if you want to remove an entire directory (or an entire website), you have to block that content using a robots.txt file. Just returning a 404 isn't enough; this is because it's possible for a directory to return a 404 status code, but still serve out files underneath it. Robotting out the entire directory ensures that all of its children are disallowed as well.

   Forum discussion at Google Group.