Removing your competition from the serps.

I have a site that ranked in the top five results for a number of terms, until last week. A few months ago, I received an email stating that if I wish to live in peace, I should find another niche; I ignored it and my site is nowhere to be found in Google's search results.

After doing much research, I found a site that placed my link on the footer of their site. The problem is, the site has more than 5,000 pages all indexed by Google and is owned by the competition.

I believe Google penalized me for too many links (too fast) with the exact same anchor text.

Has anyone else had this problem? Could eliminating a competitor really be this easy (provided you feel comfortable doing it)?

Any other ideas what might have happened?

 

I haven't actually seen this "too many links too fast" theory happen in practice.

You can sabotage a competitor with 302 redirects.

You can also sabotage a competitor by copying their site to a higher-PR site, and getting them knocked from the SERPS due to the duplicate content penalty.

PM me the URL's in question and I will take a look.

 

What is being described here is commonly known as Googlebowling. It is a practice where you literrally bowl over your competitors sites. It is black hat, and there plenty of people doing it.

 

Wow sorry guys i did not know this. So what is the line the google makes 300? So if you link some one on 5000 pages they are baned? But some pages has much more then this?

 

I have a new site that got over 10.000 pages. If I link to my old site from all of them, is it going to be penalized ?

 

try it try it

 

I would not try that. I've done more research since then and confirmed (at least for me) that this is a sure-fire way to get removed from the serps.

and Will, thanks for the offer to look at the site!

 

Again goes to show how screwed up the Search Engines have gotten with the linking prevention. .They have managed to throw the baby out with the bathwater and completely bastardize the entire intent and usefulness of links.

Instead of penalizing someone for something out of their control (getting linked to by someone else), why not penalize the person who actually has control (the person doing the linking) ?

 

Great Idea! If you really think about that, this simple concept would change the entire internet! Every website would have to think before they post a link. Feeds would have to be carefully screened, link programs would have to be heavily scrutinized and the net would be a better place.