Simon Turner

Would you report a competitor for buying links?

The issue is deserving of an entire post, and indeed there is a comprehensive one over at SEO-Chicks by Julie Joyce which sparked me into writing this very article.

The issue here is, should you report a competitor for buying links?

For me the answer is generally a yes. As someone who doesn’t buy links, it’s incredibly frustrating to be told by Google not to buy links, and then see no action taken on those blatantly breaking the guidelines. I hate to do this as I feel like a ‘tell tale’, but the fact is that it can otherwise be impossible to outrank a competitor who is buying links, without paying for links yourself.

So these are your options:

1) Buy links yourself to outrank them – risky but in some industries it’s accepted as essential.

2) Report them and cross your fingers Google takes the appropriate action. Which, may I add, for me should mean devaluing the paid links rather than handing out massive site wide penalties.

When is the answer No?

If you buy links yourself and then report a paid link that’s pretty unethical in my book. You must be clean cut and not breaking Google’s guidelines, otherwise you’re setting yourself up for someone to do the same to you.

So what do you think? Would you report a site for buying links, or do see outing a site as below the belt?