Ethics of filing a spam report with google

[Squizzel]

I have seen a webmaster who has 2 domains that rank decently for some very premium sites. Anyway, this webmaster has a blog network with tons of different domains hosted on different class c's and has interlinked them together and is linking to his "whitehat" sites.

So he has some legit sites ranking but has a blog network linking to his few main sites. He has left some breadcrumbs which can be used to link him with owning all these blogs. If i reported him, im pretty sure it would get him penalised.

I dont currently have a site ranking for this term but i am going to be "competing" with him fairly soon when i have my new site ready for launch, the reason i found out he was spamming was through researching all of the top10 with seoelite.

So now i am torn with the ethical issue of whether or not to report him, good news is hes not number 1 and i may be able to outrank him once i get a new site with a decent link profile (which may take upwards of a year anyway). Reporting him will probably make things slightly easier when i get to that point where im breaking into top 10 for these terms.

I have had some big terms before and been banned for several reasons and its not really a nice thing. Ive had income drop on a site from about $30k a month to $5k as a result of getting dropped by google, its really an unpleasant thing. But if someone may be willing to do it to you? can you do it to them? its a dog eat dog world right?

What do you think?

[MJ]

I don't consider it my job to help Google do it's job, especially if it's to serve my own interests.

A blog farm is about the last thing I'd ever report (and I've never seen anything that I would report).

If you feel it's the right thing to do you can go ahead and do it, but you better make sure everything you do is absolutely by the book if you want to justify the ethics of it. That means no link buying, no link exchanges, nada.

I think karma is a bitch and I would personally reccomend you just handle your own business ethically and let Google find and determine what sites to penalize on their own.

[321]

It's your job to protect yourself. It's not your fault that they can't compete. It's just part of the game if you want to report them.

However, what you describe certainly does not sound like spamming. People can own more than one site, and can link to their other sites (assuming they are not "duplicate sites or pages").

[OPC]

Owning and interlinking multiple sites does not necessarily constitute SPAM. In fact, having multiple sites is a great idea - providing each has relevant and unique content. There are many areas of the business a webmaster can focus on. Some people focus on multiple disciplines via one big site, others focus by way of smaller multiple websites. This is no different than the real world.

A company like General Electric focuses on many different niches through separate units under the company name (GE Transportation, GE Financial, etc.), while other companies are diverse in both their business dealings AND their branding. Berkshire Hathaway would be a great example of this, as they own GEICO, Fruit of the Loom, Russell Corp., etc).

The point is, a businessman on the web can brand himself through one site, or through several sites. If he/she brands themselves by way of seperate, unique and multiple sites, what is wrong with cross promotion? If there's nothing wrong with cross promoting one's self, then there's nothing wrong with interlinking between sites. These alone does not make SPAM.

[Pokerkeep]

I have seen a webmaster who has 2 domains that rank decently for some very premium sites. Anyway, this webmaster has a blog network with tons of different domains hosted on different class c's and has interlinked them together and is linking to his "whitehat" sites.

So he has some legit sites ranking but has a blog network linking to his few main sites. He has left some breadcrumbs which can be used to link him with owning all these blogs. If i reported him, im pretty sure it would get him penalised.

Why is this blackhat?

Many, many webmasters trade links, buy links, sell links - all considered "bad practices" by Google. That doesn't stop nearly everyone from doing it. In fact, I'd bet that the majority of members here trade, buy or sell links and interlink their sites in some fashion.

Owning and interlinking multiple domains is no worse than the above.... as long as the links are relevant to the page and topic, what's the problem?

[gerrypolt]

I think it would be a bigger problem if he had a few sites that weren't linked together.

Then I would start questioning what hes up to.

You can't expect for a second that some one with more than one site won't send some links to his others. And if he wasn't I think he is probably doing something worse to rank well for his google search terms.

Just my oppinion though.

[Squizzel]

they are all spammy blogs with hundreds of articles that dont read well almost like its jumbled text, then it has interlinking contextual links. The content is in esence worthless and provides no value except to link to all his other blogs/sites.

Its definitely done to decieve google and in a way trying to fool it by using multiple classs c's and in esssense "farming" pagerank.

Im not passing an ethical judgement here. I dont really "disapprove" of all blackhat stuff unless it starts breaking laws. But this is definitely against the google's ranking guidelines. The difference between this and buying links is that you can figure that one webmaster owns all the sites interlinking. and this can be proven obv.

[MPC]

Perhaps the quality of the articles sucks because the person's first language is not english, or they have a bad translator, or they wrote in a foreign language then translated with an automated tool. The interlinking tactics used is a common practice, particularly for blogs. I bet you that 80% of the people here who have blogs created them specificlaly for link building purposes and not because they feel the need to tell the world about the bad beat they took last night.

[CK]

Im not passing an ethical judgement here. I dont really "disapprove" of all blackhat stuff unless it starts breaking laws. But this is definitely against the google's ranking guidelines. The difference between this and buying links is that you can figure that one webmaster owns all the sites interlinking. and this can be proven obv.

Your not passing an ethical judgement because it's all about you.

The difference between this and buying links is that you can figure that one webmaster owns all the sites interlinking

And where's the difference. Both can manipulate results, so how does you buying links over someone using their own network differ?

It's your job to protect yourself. It's not your fault that they can't compete. It's just part of the game if you want to report them.

I dont really agree with that. Yes you should protect yourself, but you should be able to build a site that can compete with others. You shouldnt have to resort to reporting whoever you feel isnt "doing the right thing" to ease up on the competition.

Im not talking about spam crap sites, like these duplicate ones we see, or the .edu garbage. More or less webmasters who build small networks and link to their own. I dont see anything wrong with this at all and to be honest, I dont think its any different than people who buys links. Both are equal.

IMO it's the OP who has issues competing and wants to make his job easier.

[CorryC]

Reporting them would be pretty weak in my opinion. Not only that, but as MJ mentioned--if you are going to report them you better be ready to be by the book 100%. Also get ready to get your site derailed once again, because what goes around comes around.

Whether the guy who owns these sites is following Google guidelines or not--he has worked his ass off to get there just like the rest of us.