Have question on abuse..

A local competitor of mine decided to copy my meta tag source code verbatim, as well as much of my text on my homepage. Worried about being thrown off the search engines for a mirrored site (she is now enjoying number one placement in many searches so she is being reindexed daily by Google), I was forced to change my meta tag source codes and text. This person is listed in the ODP, while I am still trying to find out my status. Now this unscrupulous person is spamming by placing the same keyword on the homepage of her site over 136 times, yet she still remains in the top position.
What can I do about this? Is this person breaking the rules? (Besides being a criminal) Should I report this?
It is really not fair that while I am trying so hard to follow the rules, I am getting nowhere, while she is breaking all the rules and getting #1 postitions.
Can someone please help?
Thank you for your time,
pumpkingirl

pumkingirl, the ODP looks at content of sites - and by that I mean content that a user can see. Therefore, editors take no notice of meta tags.

If the visible content is being copied, and you can prove ownership, then you need to take whatever legal proceedings are necessary to get the site taken down.

You must understand that the ODP will not police these sorts of cases. From our perspective we can not prove the right or the wrongs of any of this. Also, the Open Directory Projects is a directory - and how search engines rank sites is completely beyond our control.

Sorry to hear that you are being given a hard time by this other person, though.

What about the use of a keyword over 136 times just to gain a high ranking status? Would that qualify for abuse?

pumpkingirl

P.S. I did look into legal action, even had a great case with pages of proof, but alas, the retainer is way out of my budget!

This is waaay outside the remit of editors, as well as outside the scope of this forum; but your solution probably lies in restoring your content to how it was and dropping a note to the ISP that hosts the other site, and dropping a note to the Google abuse team, details easily found on Googles site. If you had left your own content alone, then the server headers might have also given a clue that your content had been there for years, and that their site has not, but that evidence is now destroyed. To proceed, you need to contact Google and the ISP of the other site. We cannot offer further advice on this.

Since she is being reindexed every day, and I have not been reindexed in well over 2 months, I was advised to change my text & source code due to the fact that my site would be looked on as being a copy of her site and I would be removed. Yes, it is unfair, but that's how it goes. I do have paper copys of everything as well as a security printout that shows the meta tag source codes and most of my text were an exact copy of mine. I have contacted Google and various others, but nothing has been done yet. I just wanted to find out if there was some type of rule this person is breaking by spamming. I wasn't sure if there was a rule about this sort of conduct, or if it even matters.

pumpkingirl

Report it to Google.

From a purely ODP perspective, no, it doesn't matter. We look at sites from a perspective of the end user - the person looking for the information. We don't get into these sorts of issues. You keep talking about rankings and meta-tags - as I explained in my first post in this thread, the ODP ignores meta tags.

Just to back this up - dmoz is only concerned with the quality of information that is available to the user. If that information justifies a listing then the site gets listed. It doesn't matter if the webmaster has chosen a really horrible background color or loud music to accompany your surfing experience unless this makes the content less accessible e.g. you can't read the text. Site design, including hidden text, repeated keywords etc. is not a factor in deciding whether to list a site unless it detracts from the usability of the content.

For the record, it is unlikely that copying your meta tags would have bumped your competitor up the Google listings since, like most search engines now, Google pays no attention to meta tags. However, you can submit a spam report form to Google about the repeated keyword issue - that form is available here.

Thank you for your responces. I had reported to Google, and am waiting for a responce from them. The site in question is just annoying to read with the same word listed so many times on one page, but other than that, I supppose the site is not breaking any rules as far as ODP (but Google is another story!).

pumpkingirl

pumpkingirl
yes, you have got it!
best of luck with your other choice of action.
[we just list, if good content] [and not much else]
;-)