Is It Right or Wrong to Out a Competitor Using Manipulative Search Engine Optimization Tactics?

Rand Fishkin outed an SEO company last week for suspect search engine optimization techniques.  Since then, there has been innumeral posts regarding the techniques in question and the fact that someone like Rand publicly outs another SEO firm for using tactics that he may be advising his own online community membership.

SEO Book‘s Aaron Wall has a lenghtly blog post regarding Rand’s behavior. The post also includes a a video from Shoemoney, who also questions Rands outing of a company for tactics that Rand has used at one time himself and includes his vue on paid advertising.

I follow Rand Fishkin’s at Seomoz blog and I pick up valuable information from Rand’s indepth analysis of search engine optimization and social media marketing. I admire Rand for what he has accomplished but still, I don’t get it. Why would someone of Rand’s stature take to outing an SEO company.  It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Google will eventually catch up with the company and justice will be served. The real point here is that by the time Google catches up to them, they will have made a samll or large fortune by then and they will take their profits and just start over with a backup they probably already have in the system.

We see this a lot in SEO, clients will show us a competitive website and want us to out their competitors who may or may not be using black hat tactics to rank well in Google.

Its not in our nature to out companies. That is just our way of doing things but that doesn’t mean we are right. That is just who we are.

I would like to hear your opinion on the matter. If your competitor was manipulating the system to take advantage of Google, would you report them?