Official Google answer: A client has a leading competitor who has created 100 or so blog sites with little depth - Google gives them a top ranking on every related term to their industry. Why does this tactic still win?

Question:

A client has a leading competitor who has created 100 or so blog sites with little depth - Google gives them a top ranking on every related term to their industry. Why does this tactic still win? I thought this was crap hat tactics?

Google's Matt Cutts answers:

Summary of the answer:

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Question	Views
Is there a way to benefit from content scraped from your site?	562
My SEO client is using shared hosting for one of their websites. When I checked other sites hosted on their server, I found some spammy websites. Will that affect ranking of my client's website?	580
When will Google create a software similar to Web Position so that SEOs, spam fighters and regular webmasters can check rankings etc. without violating the guidelines?	568
If I externalize all CSS style definitions and JavaScript scripts and disallow all user agents from accessing these external files (via robots.txt), would this cause problems for Googlebot?	432
Any updates on "site hierarchies display in search results" (aka breadcrumbs)?	469
I have a client who was hacked. The SEO consultant said things were cleaned up, but they weren't correctly. All 30,000 viagra/cialis type and paid links have been removed, but no improvement in SERPs. We send reconsideration. What do we do now?	585
How can a website compete for high rankings using only white hat techniques in industries that are dominated by spammers if Google takes months to react to spam reports and by that time new black hat sites are ranking?	699
How accurate is Google's backlink-check (link:...)?	674
A site for my client's competitor shows up on a SERP for keywords that never show up in the site anywhere (not even hidden in the source code). How is this even possible, and isn't this spam?	611
What are Google's thoughts on blog commenting?	470

Question

Views

Is there a way to benefit from content scraped from your site?

562

My SEO client is using shared hosting for one of their websites. When I checked other sites hosted on their server, I found some spammy websites. Will that affect ranking of my client's website?

580

When will Google create a software similar to Web Position so that SEOs, spam fighters and regular webmasters can check rankings etc. without violating the guidelines?

568

If I externalize all CSS style definitions and JavaScript scripts and disallow all user agents from accessing these external files (via robots.txt), would this cause problems for Googlebot?

432

Any updates on "site hierarchies display in search results" (aka breadcrumbs)?

469