What are these guys doing?

[Chilihost]

I have had this happen to quite a few of my sites, I have tried using the google complaint page but that never helped. Unfortunately, since you have not officially copyrighted your terminology you are pretty much SOL.

These guys suck, but maybe if enough of us complained to google and other search engines they might blacklist their domains, but its not likely

cheers,
Luke

[Dzinerbear]

Maybe if enough of us complained to the sponsors they are promoting. Of course the sponsors are making money, so it would have to be more than a handful of complainers. I hate the scum in this business.

Michael

[shaun]

Ok - here is a strange idea... but I have had luck with it....

Write to the guy and tell him that this isn't ok and ask him to not do it. I have done this on several occasions, and on every occasion, the "culprit" was cooperative and apologetic.

When I have had this happen to me, frequently it isnt the site owner at all, but someone who has been hired to do marketing etc....

[Rainbo1956]

Ok - here is a strange idea... but I have had luck with it....

Write to the guy and tell him that this isn't ok and ask him to not do it. I have done this on several occasions, and on every occasion, the "culprit" was cooperative and apologetic.

When I have had this happen to me, frequently it isnt the site owner at all, but someone who has been hired to do marketing etc....

I agree.
This had happened to us many times. But, since we were also trading links with other sites I felt like, what the hell...why not have our site listed on as many other sites as we can. More traffic "if" they're getting it.
Yeah it used to burn the hell out of me that when I did a search for my key words or my site that they would come up first in the search. But, there was little I could do...except write them and ask them to stop...usually they'd stop it right away and things would go back to "normal"...only to have someone else do it right behind the last culprit

[Dzinerbear]

Hey guys,

I understand what you're saying about just accepting it and taking the traffic. However, why I've got a bee in my bonnet about this kind of stuff is that I take SEO VERY seriously and I don't fuck around with search engines. I don't play tricks and use techniques that are of the quick fix variety. And I don't want to be associated with people who do. "You lie down with dogs you get fleas" and that sort of thing.

However, given this domain is registered in Samoa, I doubt I'll be too successful tracking anyone down. So I'm kind of in a "live with it" place.

The good news is that scammers like this are usually pulling all kinds of stuff that'll eventually catch up with them, and then, they'll disappear from Google.

cheers
Michael