Can A Competitor Manipulate Your Ranking in Google Search?

[walrus]

If it's a cononical issue, learn about and use the cononical tag - http://www.canonicaltag.com/

The latest theory I've heard is that inbound links can only help, not hurt your site as you are not responsible for those that link to you.

I don't buy that theory but it is the one I hear most quoted. Logically, it just seems that too many inbound links from bad neighborhoods would have to affect you.

That many inbound links from that few of sources might be triggering some kind of flag as an attempt to manipulate the SERPS but I'm not an expert.

[Gyongyos]

Originally Posted by walrus

If it's a cononical issue, learn about and use the cononical tag - http://www.canonicaltag.com/

The latest theory I've heard is that inbound links can only help, not hurt your site as you are not responsible for those that link to you.

Yes, in most cases this is true because usually webmasters are not that "dirty" to mess with their competitors ranking, but you were unlucky because you have found a dirty webmaster. Inbound links can help a lot to increase the ranking and PR of your sites HOWEVER even if they can only help to increase your PR (yes, inbound links from "dirty"/illegal sites can help to increase your PR) the anchor text used is very important because if Google finds out that the link's anchor text is irrelevant to the website content your ranking may drop. (and this happened for you)

There is nothing much you can do, besides to contacting Google several times because they respond very hard but they are the only one who can help you. Ask them to ban the website from Google so the inbound links will not count.