That's some nifty detective work!

Linoge, blogging at Walls Of The City, has done a neat bit of investigation into four online ammunition retailers that exhibit some suspiciously common traits like identical pricing - and, as has emerged in the comments to his post, almost identical Web code, too. It looks very much as if a single operation has set up multiple corporate identities in an attempt to corner as many search engine returns as possible, and get around Google's restrictions on duplicate content and redirection links.

I'm pretty annoyed at such corporate shenanigans, particularly because the operation's playbook has included trying to get as many blogs as possible to put up a link to at least one of their sites. I call it underhanded, sneaky and unethical, even if it's not illegal. For that reason, I won't be shopping at Luckygunner.com, Bulkammo.com, Gunsforsale.com or Ammo.net. Such conduct deserves to be shunned, not supported. I think I'll be dropping a line to Google as well, asking them to look into this situation.

Congratulations to Linoge on a fine piece of detective work.

Peter