Today I have been looking at my competitors again and found that one of them has the same 200 words on every page of his site and still ranks 11th on google. www.bamboorodmaker.com The site just has a dmoz listing some spam sites that link to him and the rest of his site has some 300 words more unique content. one helluva footer huh? It looks to me that screaming font sizes instead of header tags really tricks google
Fill in a spam report and tell google. My guess is that his site is ranking well for other reasons and they are ignoring the dup content.
Don't bloomin mention competitors with duplicate content to me ours are blatently flaunting the google webmaster policies and yet our sites have been practially dropped to the bottom of the SERPS. Sooner Microsoft buys google the better
don't start about filing reports lol. I reported another ( www.jenkinsflyrods.com ) ranking in the top 5 I think and has hidden text. I reported him 2 times the past two months and he just keeps climbing the serps.
In most cases google has spotted the hidden text and it isn't helping the site in the serps. Keep filling in spam reports and ALWAYS reply to any email response you get from google.