Could my competitors be spamming me?

Your competitors cannot normally change the content of your Web site if you've kept your password a secret. However, some Webmasters worry that a competitor could submit you repetitively, causing your site to get you blocked on AltaVista. Although this is possible, AltaVista claims that they account for that scenario. Here's an excerpt from issue #40 of the Search Engine Watch report ( http://www.searchenginewatch.com ). Tracy Roberts, AltaVista's marketing director, was being interviewed:

"If your pages are gone, and if you get a 'Too many URLs at that site have been submitted today' message when resubmitting, then there's a pretty good chance AltaVista has decided you were spamming them. If you disagree, then you should get in contact using AltaVista's feedback form. 'We are monitoring those, so that when a request is made, we will go in and look at the site,' Roberts said."

Could someone be oversubmitting your site to make it seem as if you were spamming? Perhaps, but Roberts said, "AltaVista has mechanisms to check on this." Personally, I would hope that AltaVista does not attempt to ban sites based solely on their number of submissions. If so, there are many ways this could be abused by unethical competitors.

This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software, the makers of WebPosition Gold. FirstPlace Software helped define the SEO industry with the introduction of the first product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings. A free trial of WebPosition Gold is available from their Web site.

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