Is this spam

[leehill]

Hi we have a web site that up until recently was enjoying quite good rankings in google.

We recently employed a company who was tasked with the role of "sending loads of visitors" to our site.

What they appear to have done is build a web site which leeched news stories from all over the net (i.e. it contained no orginal content) they then had over 1000 inbound links from that site to ours.

Since then we have practically dissapeared from the google rankings and they are claiming that this is not a result of anything they have done.

Our google webmaster account is shoinw over 2000 links from 2 sites created by them all appearing as inbound links in the space of a 4 week period.

What harm have they done and what can we do to rectify this.

thanks,

Lee

[AussieWebmaster]

yeah that could be the result of a penalty.... they would have been better writing you loads of good content and increasing the content on your site - more pages to get ranked for various terms - but to scrap content and then link to you is a big no no - and if you are the only outbound link you are the backdoor creator

[jitendraag]

I don't think that can cause the results that you observe. Otherwise I would start making such domains and pointing to my competitors every day.

The technique used by them is definitely spammy but the results are definitely something I don't agree with.

[AussieWebmaster]

you can get penalized if they are hosted on same server...

[leehill]

thanks for the help.

According to Webmaster tools our profile dropped rapidly in December which was the same time they started doing the above.

[AussieWebmaster]

what do they say about it when you talk to them? have you seen the content - did you check out the sites where the links are coming from?

[leehill]

they say "dont talk rubbish" its nothing to do with anything we have done. their site contained not a single shred of original content and was set up in the space of about 3 weeks and all the reciprocal links where added in the space of 24 hours which i have also heard can be a very bad thing. i.e. brand new site, brand new domain suddenly sending 2000 links to your domain.

[AussieWebmaster]

exactly... time to drop them - and get the stuff stopped... how much have you paid them?
ask them if they have heard of Traffic Power and have they read this http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/confirming-a-penalty/

[AussieWebmaster]

Lee pm me the name of the company

[ricko]

I don't think that can cause the results that you observe. Otherwise I would start making such domains and pointing to my competitors every day.

The technique used by them is definitely spammy but the results are definitely something I don't agree with.

True. I agree with this. It's not likely that your 'seo company' caused the problem. There are many other factors at work.

Are you completely off the map or just down a bit?

[Marcia]

all the reciprocal links where added in the space of 24 hoursReciprocal links? Did your site link out to the spam site they created?