Link stealing

[pickle]

Hi there :)

I am in a bit of a dilemma and wondered if anyone could lend some advice on a tricky situation I have.

For the last 5 months I have been working on a links campaign for a good client of mine, and as such it has been going very well. Beyond my expectations really, the site in question jumped to number 2 for the search criteria I wanted along with a nice rise in pagerank, so it's looking pretty good.

Well, until today.. :furious:

Every couple of weeks I go through validate my link partners and find that a couple of them aren't reciprocating, so I visit the sites to investigate. When I check the sites, I see that my anchor link text is in place, but the URL is pointing to a competing site that I overtook.

So needless to say I am pretty miffed, and I can only expect on this basis that the competing site will continue to do this until something happens.

The question is, what should I do ? I really am at a loss and don't want to go upsetting my partners, nor tell my client that his links campaign is being slowly stolen by an unscrupulous competitor.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated and thanks a lot for your time for reading this.

P.S. Great site and forums, I have been 'lurking' for months :)

[jocelyn]

Well the link is on your partner's site, so he had to modify it.
It's obviously not your competitor that modified their pages.
You'll have to contact them to know what is the scoop.

[pickle]

Indeed, it looks as though I was lucky in this instance. My partner just fired a mail back saying that the competing site had mailed them to say that their web address had changed and that they should change it. Of course the partner didn't think for a second to check her original email communication and just changed the link over.

Not a big deal now that I know what I am up against, but it's sad to see people stoop to these levels to promote their site. Thanks for reading :)

[jocelyn]

[QUOTE=pickle]My partner just fired a mail back saying that the competing site had mailed them to say that their web address had changed and that they should change it.[/QUOTE]
Now thats a good one. Wow, some people have some nerves.
I guess they don't care about their credibility at all.
I wonder if this could be used for a lawsuit if someone is bored and feels like bashing the idiot.
I mean this is an intentionnal act of stealing identity, hurting someones business, or some abuse of some kink. The email is proof...
Any SEO lawyers here ?

[RideQ]

Wow, thats some really shady business...

[pickle]

Well the plot is thickening :) I obviously can't give any detailed specifics but I spoke to my client who in turn spoke to the guy who owns the competing site.

He says that "his web guy" is marketing the site for him (quite possible), and that he wouldn't do such a thing.

Well, either the site owner or his web guy have done so and we have email proof from both myself and my partner to prove our original exchange agreement.

I don't particularly fancy drawing this out into a legal proceeding because I've checked a majority of my partners links which appear for the moment to be O.K. (Although of course I don't know if any are pending change!)

It just hacks me off that my client has spent time and money trusting me to promote him, and some greedy sod swans in and wantonly misleads my partners who have given us links in very good faith for our mutual benefit.

I guess this is one of those lessons in life.

[Nick0r]

woah that's one set of really dirty tactics, its the first I've heard of this in SEO but I guess theres more to come.

[eCommando]

This is terrible, pretty dishonest. It's like identity theft.