How can I overtake my rival on google, considering his site doesn't exist anymore?

November 7, 2006 6:50 AM

How can I overtake my rival on google, considering his site doesn't exist anymore?

For my #1 keyword on google, I have the #2 spot. The #1 spot, a former competitor, has been offline for MONTHS.

Is there any way to get google to remove the dead link from its index? How do I beat a dead site?

I think the reason he is above me is because his domain name has my actual keywords in it, mine does not.

posted by quibx to Technology (16 answers total)

Best answer: By offline, do you mean that you can an error message when you try to access it, or that it's been co-opted by a generic domain holder?

Try submitting your rival's page to Google for re-indexing. The next time their spider hits the site it should be removed.
posted by justkevin at 6:58 AM on November 7, 2006

Probably not the answer you want to hear, but how about making an offer to your former rival for his domain name?
posted by curtm at 7:04 AM on November 7, 2006

You might get better answers if you told us what the keyword was.
posted by mendel at 7:12 AM on November 7, 2006

Response by poster: I didn't want to self-link, but the keywords is "Japanese Toys"
posted by quibx at 7:24 AM on November 7, 2006

To save others the trouble, the site in question display a simple site configuration/admin page, as if it was just set up with no content yet.

(I shan't link to it lest I give it's ranking a boost)

Aside from justkevin's suggestion, I'm not sure there is much you can do other than wait for Google to do their magic, or approach the problem from the other direction and attempt to improve your SEO/inlinks.
posted by MetaMonkey at 7:33 AM on November 7, 2006

Does this actually matter? I mean, users who go to the first link and find there's nothing there will probably then try yours.

Unless you're trying to get hits from [I'm Feeling Lucky] but I don't know anybody who uses that.
posted by randomination at 7:55 AM on November 7, 2006

If the rival's gone bust, they might be happy to get a few quid for the domain name. Get someone seemingly with no connection to you (different area, no online connections, etc.) to make a low offer (assuming you can get some contact details), just in case you're lucky and they go for it.
posted by malevolent at 8:00 AM on November 7, 2006

Unless you're trying to get hits from [I'm Feeling Lucky] but I don't know anybody who uses that.

If you type search terms into the address bar in Firefox, you go directly to the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' result. I imagine quite a few people use that.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:04 AM on November 7, 2006

I am a gambling man and use the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button all the time. It works about 37% of the time for me. The other 63% there are usually interesting sites or I just hit the back button and try again with all results. The more you put into the search bar, the more likely the feeling lucky results are good.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:13 AM on November 7, 2006

Well looking at your stats there is absolutely no reason as to why he appears first. You have the same page rank but other than than you have way more incoming links, better content (obviously!!), more links from delicous etc etc etc. the only thing he has up on you is that his site is established longer....

you could perhaps try and resubmit his site to Google in an effort to get the spiders to re-index the site?
posted by twistedonion at 8:22 AM on November 7, 2006

OR.... you could actually link to the site in a popular web forum that may get indexed by the Googly spiders frequently. then they will find his page quicker and rank it accordingly.
posted by twistedonion at 8:24 AM on November 7, 2006

also, that configuration page seems to be a redirect from the domain root, the domain root has nothing on it at all.
posted by snofoam at 10:03 AM on November 7, 2006

Best answer: Look everyone, Japanese Toys!

my work here is done
posted by phrontist at 11:12 AM on November 7, 2006

Good job, phrontist
posted by growabrain at 11:17 AM on November 7, 2006

/has just realized growabrain is a member here and is impressed

Do you have one of those Google Sitemaps to help Google crawl your site even better?
posted by IndigoRain at 9:53 PM on November 7, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks all for the help! yes, I do have a sitemap, and am using analytics to optimize the page, amongst other resources.
posted by quibx at 6:09 AM on November 8, 2006