How do people get away with this?

[freebetinfo]

This post is deleted!

[freebetinfo]

I should have mentioned that my problem is that it's just nonsense spam. The text makes zero sense, it's just drivel

[RobertFisher]

Mark, I doubt there is anyone on SEOmoz who has not felt your pain, but I will shoot at providing perspective over commiseration. Handling a lot of sites I see this and scratch my head at times. But, the question about what to do should be directed toward things WE can change and not Google. 1 - it could be a momentary blip, 2 - Can't change Google alone, 3 - you can control your site(s). So work on three. Have you discovered the very best keywords and long tail keywords for what your site provides? Are you monitoring your analytics and WMT to insure they are right and conversions, etc. are good? Is your content for the ranking term you are looking at the best on the web? Have you cleared all the debris (errors, etc) from the site? Is your social media spot on? 
I said WE and say all of this as much to myself as to you. There will be those who slip through occasionally or frequently, but you are spinning your wheels to worry too much about it. After you fix everything on your site and you know there is no better content, anchor text, quality links, etc, if you are still having this problem, I will call Larry Page and tell him I wish.

I just know that it is less painful to work on where our site(s) could improve than to worry about the ones that are getting a bit of a free ride.

Best

[AlanMosley]

Report spam results to google.

[freebetinfo]

Thanks for your input Robert, very insightful.

I realise there may be nobody who knows the answer to this question, but I'll ask anyway:

Is it likely that this will last as a tactic?

[RobertFisher]

I just don't believe, if that is their only real advantage, it can last. Content becomes more important every day. So, when you look at fighting this, fight them with what lasts as opposed to a temporary fix.

[freebetinfo]

It's just that all our pages are given an A for on page content by seoMOZ and have always ranked very well with what I consider to be good content.

When this site appeared from nowhere (and it was basically a clone of ours) I presumed and still do that they obtained these rankings purely on their links.

Oh well. I just hope they are punished for this