I am curious if anyone has had this happen to them and what you should do if it happens. Just an example a competitor in your niche goes to Google and fills out a spam complaint just to cause havoc with your website even though you have never spammed anywhere. Does Google contact the website being accused or are they left in the dark? Just been reading a few articles lately about this, but no one seems to give an answer on how to check for it or what to do if it occurs.
Should only be a problem if Google investigates and finds you are using questionable SEO methods in the URL your competitors reports.
Ok but lets say a competitor includes your URL in emails or takes an article from ezinearticles.com that has your URL and sends out spam of some sort through emails or posts in forums. Then they use those to report your site. Or lets just say any random surfer reports anything you do as spam even when it is not. Like someone signing up for your newsletter then instead of opting out they report you as a spammer. Will you ever know this occurred and if you are being penalized by Google for it? Can you inquire to Google as to whether or not your site has been accused of spam?
No Google leaves you in the dark, however one way to know is if your SERP's and traffic sink. If this happens it's up to you to identify the problem, correct it and either submit a reinclusion request or wait to bounce back.
How would you identify that the drop was do to a false spam report though and not just Google dropping your pages down? Just as an example lets say you have a 100 page website that has 90 pages in the main index and 10 in the supplemental index. Then all of a sudden you get knocked down to 10 pages in the main index and the other 90 were put in the supplemental index. Can you send in a reinclusion request asking if you have been penalized for something even though you are still indexed in the supplemental index? Or does Google ban your site completely if they think you are spamming? Reinclusion seems to be more for if you were totally banned from the index.
Ok i highly doubt you will ever be effected by a "false" spam report. If Google knocks your site on the head, chances are there is a good reason. It's up to you to identify the reason and correct it. If your number of pages drop there's dozens of explanations, such as your backlinks may of been removed or devalued. I'm sure if you dig deep you will find the reason and it's nothing to do with a false spam report. If you Email Google about it, they will just point you to the webmaster guidelines and say make sure your site complies. Also yes, reinclusion requests are normally for when your completely gone from the index.
Referring to the Google spam report form found here: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html Google isn't likely to drop your site from its search listings if you or anybody else spams people via email. The form linked above is for reporting shady SEO practices, which is the only type of spam report I can imagine having an effect on your Google rankings. Email spam complaints usually only interest your web host.
I was reading this Matt Cutts blog about reinclusion and it seems a lot of people all the way back to 2005 ( Updated November 4, 2007) have been complaining about being knocked down without even realizing they have done anything wrong. Just seems like something should be included in your webmaster tools on Google if your site is being flagged for something. All the guess work is a waste of time for both sides of the equation.
Not exactly a Spam report, however I was targeted by a competitor and it was at a time when I was actually abroad on vacation, I had a watch Site, heavy with Adsense and brought me in Approx: $30 - $50/Day, this is going back a few years now and I have never used Adsense since. I returned from my vacation and went online for the first time in 2 weeks finding my Adsense Account had been terminated, I tried mailing for days to find out why but all I got was that the Ads had had too many 'illegal' clicks per day, they simply would not listen that it couldn't have been me as I was on vacation, they are very strict and tunnel visioned when it comes to this; I spoke to a couple of people who knew a lot more than I did about Adsense and they informed me it must have been competitors sat there hour after hour clicking on the Ads knowing eventually they would trigger my codes to be stopped and the Account terminated as too many clicks were coming from the same I.P. Address; believe me, there are people out there who will sabotage your Ads in such a way, I was devastated at the absolute lack of support or ability to be able to contact someone higher up in Google. Keep a close eye on your own Adsense activities and if you are getting a strange amount of clicks suddenly in one day then I would inform Google about it before all your hard work is destroyed by mindless people.
I doubt google will deindex any site without any proper reason. When they receive a complain its make sense they would at least take a look into the matter properly. I am sure they are aware of the fact that dropping people just based on another persons allegation will harm their own search engine business.
If competitor just send a false spam report, it's will not be reflected on your site ranking, but if he really will sending spam with your URL it can be down your rank in Google.