Last week Ryan Braun got caught for using performance-enhancing drugs not too long after he won the award for MVP in baseball. In almost every walk of life there is temptation to cheat. In school, in politics, in business, every time your read the news it feels like someone is getting caught for cheating.

There is one area where I have never heard of someone getting caught for cheating though, and that area is the Internet.  You can’t bribe Yahoo! or Google to rank higher on their search engines. There is no illegal smart pill that you can take that will triple your conversion rates.  There are services and there are people who you can hire.  But there is no way around the hard work. You have to beat the other guy, plain and simple.

That is why I love my job. If one of SeeVolution’s competitors is doing really well I don’t question the legitimacy of their success. I know that they are either working harder than me, working smarter than me, or both. This in turn creates a sense of envy as well as determination.  Why am I not #1 on Google? What are they doing differently than me? Where can I improve?

The Internet is like an elephant. It never forgets. Unlike baseball’s three strike policy that is administered by parents, bosses, and law enforcement agencies all over the world, the Internet employs a slightly stricter one strike and you’re out policy. Thanks to services like ripoffreport.com cheaters are exposed and forever remembered online.

So the next time you get stressed at work, take a breath, sit back, and relax. Think about people who, on a daily basis, are tempted to cheat in order to get ahead. Not only do they get tempted to cheat, but they also have to question whether others around them are cheating. The entire situation is a sticky one, and something I am glad I don’t have to worry about.

If you have a story about someone who has cheated or been caught cheating either online, or in any other type of industry I would love to hear about it in the comments.