Negative SEO... Fact or fiction?

12 years ago

It's very possible and not much is stopping you actually. Unless your site is a very high quality + authority site negative SEO is possible, even easy.

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David Keith

12 years ago

negative seo does not work like you guys think. Many of your attempts are going to back fire. I have tested the crap out of this stuff for a hosting company that specializes in hosting for seo purposes.

Keep reading what the SEO "experts" say...lol. They are the exact people google is targeting with this stuff. Do you really think google is that easily fooled...lol

BTW, i would have no problem with anyone using any negative seo technique against my sites... It only makes them stronger in the end.... i promise.

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Benjamin Tork

12 years ago

Originally Posted by David Keith

negative seo does not work like you guys think. Many of your attempts are going to back fire. I have tested the crap out of this stuff for a hosting company that specializes in hosting for seo purposes.

Keep reading what the SEO "experts" say...lol. They are the exact people google is targeting with this stuff. Do you really think google is that easily fooled...lol

BTW, i would have no problem with anyone using any negative seo technique against my sites... It only makes them stronger in the end.... i promise.

You should add your websites here. Am sure some people would be interested in testing it out. Would love to see some more case studies on this. Anyway I've spammed some of my own websites with ALOT of backlinks, now their dead and no where to be found.

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David Keith

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Benjamin Tork

You should add your websites here. Am sure some people would be interested in testing it out. Would love to see some more case studies on this. Anyway I've spammed some of my own websites with ALOT of backlinks, now their dead and no where to be found.

Here is a quick run down of how this actually works.

when a site uses the normal SEO over-optimization tactics which were working well, the site gets flagged for being over optimized and in the last update got killed.

So people decided that if those techniques got my site nuked they will work to get others nuked.

Thats kinda how it works. but here is what will happen next. Sometimes its quick, and others times it takes a few weeks.

Unless the site you use negative seo tactics against was flagged by google as being over-optimized to begin with, they will return and the negative factors are basically zeroed out.

If your competitor was using over-optimization stuff, then yes negative seo tactics will have a quick and more permanent affect.

Essentially, if you attack a site that was not playing in the SEO game with negative seo attacks the effect on them will be temporary.

The next thing that will happen is that once your competitor returns, they get what kinda seems to act like an immunity against further negative seo attacks.

Google has just pitted all the seo guys against each other. sites that never played the over-optimization game to begin with will be fine. The rest of this stuff is just a google dance that will all settle down.

negative seo is just a fad. Whats funny is the supposed "seo experts" are the ones who got hit hardest by this stuff because all their sites were already flagged as being over-optimized.

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joseph7384

12 years ago

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David Keith

12 years ago

Originally Posted by joseph7384

I beg to differ, this is a quote from a page in Google's webmasters tools.

This is what it said in 2006.

[/I]

This is what it says today, focus on the bolded sentence in each quote.

It seems that they have changed their stance on the subject.

i am well aware of their changes. Did you read my further explanation of how it seems to work. I have tested this a ton for a major hosting provider. I am talking hundreds of tests already.

Google has access to more data and more intellectual horsepower than there probably is combined in the IM niche.

You are not be able to significantly affect the long term quality of most google search results with a few negative seo fiverr gigs...lol

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Angela V. Edwards

12 years ago

Originally Posted by David Keith

i am well aware of their changes. Did you read my further explanation of how it seems to work. I have tested this a ton for a major hosting provider. I am talking hundreds of tests already.

Google has access to more data and more intellectual horsepower than there probably is combined in the IM niche.

You are not be able to significantly affect the long term quality of most google search results with a few negative seo fiverr gigs...lol

And I'm very glad you've been testing this. My Pet Peeve with backlinks and SEO is that pretty much everyone likes to pass around misinformation they've heard, WITHOUT any kind of testing. I look at and repeat ONLY things that are "tried and true", meaning they've been tested many times and hold true through all the testing.

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Randall Magwood

12 years ago

I think you should get your backlinks the natural way.

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Charanjit

12 years ago

fact, the reason I know this I was testing the ability of 2.0 blogs and how they help ranking web sites till I went over bored lol. Magic submitter x 11 profiles x 50 2.0 sites x 3 articles a day = 1700 links a day (add the fact in that I used spam box/indexing tools/rss submitters to get them index) was averaging something like 75% indexing, now this was not a new site more than anything it was a test site with a lot of unique content, within 4 days I was hit with a -10 serps and after 7 days hit with a -30 serps, now I am trying to see if I can get it back up (by increasing the rank / juice ) of the 2.0 sites. So from my lessons yes negative seo does work and before any one asks I was using natural anchors such as , home, site website, www.sitename etc, and the - serps was on words that I had not even anchored.

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David Keith

12 years ago

The problem with seo testing that makes it so tough is that you can almost prove any theory with testing.

Not only are there are just so many variables we know to calculate in to the tests, but I am 100% sure google is using stuff to rank sites that we have no idea they use.

There really is no way to truly do tests that would pass scientific scrutiny.

But everything I have seen indicates google is basically trying to make the entire SEO industry as irrelevant as possible. I realize they could never actually do that, but they can take steps that make gaming the system much less effective.

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condra 12 years ago

Onpage omtimization, and "flagging" aside, when you use third parties, such as Magic Submitter, SocialAdr, Fiverr gigs, etc, Google has NO WAY of knowing the MOTIVE behind the links.

Let's face it, often your nearest competitor is another marketer, not an authority site.

As far as I can see.... Either "Negative SEO" works, or trying to promote your own site with crummy backlinks is harmless.

Either spammy backlinks are harmful, or they aren't. (surely?)

By the way, thanks everyone for making this an awesome thread.
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Charanjit

12 years ago

problem with cheap fiver gigs they do not get indexed, use 2.0 sites and they have a higher index rate, again all I can talk from is my own testing, an important tool that might help is seo majestics, go on their and check the back link history of www.yellow-taxi.co.uk as you see the testing started on the 1 june by the 7th lol the -30 had kicked in but just for good measure I carried on building to see the thrash hold of de-indexing , now look at the link profile.

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Charanjit

12 years ago

honestly the way forward is personal blog networks, they do work, use different c-class hosts from all over the world (normally cost something like $2.50 a month hosting), get 5 and find another 9 people with 5 each, that gives you access to 50 personal blogs, now as long as the content is unique and readable I never see a problem, if you want to go over bored simple get 10,20,30 etc but I think 5 is workable, do not interlink these blog networks, buy old d15 year old domain from go daddy for $10 and get on your way.

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Charanjit

12 years ago

I think trail and error is the way forward, so much hype, smoking mirrors etc but the fact is bmw , uaw, etc did work and would they work post panda, I think they would, panda clamped down on unnatural linking/anchors. so if bmr was still alive and used with a brain it would work quite well as the bmr had alot of high ranking blogs.

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Bill_Z

12 years ago

I have tested it. As has some of my friends who do SEO as well. It's certainly possible and not that difficult to do. It depends on the target site of course, it's backlink profile, authority, and how much "trust" it already has with Google.

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condra

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Bill_Z

I have tested it. As has some of my friends who do SEO as well. It's certainly possible and not that difficult to do. It depends on the target site of course, it's backlink profile, authority, and how much "trust" it already has with Google.

So if my main competition is a 4 page PR1, affiliate website ... then they can be taken out.
That's a really messed up situation.

I really hope negative SEO is not possible but all the signs I'm seeing are telling me it is.

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Charanjit

12 years ago

to be fair you would not have to do much to beat a pr1 web site, it should be a walk in the park so I would never negative seo a site as karma is a bitch. I would rather spend that time making my site better.

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cooler1

12 years ago

Negative SEO is possible without doubt as the Penguin update is mainly based on backlink over optimization and anyone can build backlinks to anyones site obviously. I think it was possible before Penguin, but now it's easier because anchor text diversity has been given a much higher priority in the algorithm.

My sites that hardly had any backlinks were not negetively affected by Penguin, but my sites with consideribly more backlinks were hit and get almost no traffic now, which shows the bad effect backlinks have when the anchors aren't diverse enough.

Google said recently they are considering releasing a link disinvow tool which will allow you to disallow links that you didn't build, but I don't know how that would work because then webmasters could reverse the Penguin algo penalty if they have the option to disallow certain backlinks.

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condra

12 years ago

I find it hard to see why Google wouldn't just completely discount crummy backlinks.

Perhaps they think this would encourage people to continue to buy backlinks anyway, because they would have nothing to lose.

It looks to me like Google is getting better at tackling spam and premium backlinks, etc, but Negative SEO is a byproduct.

I think social is gonna continue to be a crucial part of SEO in the future, as Google gets better at identifying genuine social accounts, and natural discussion.

For now though, as far as I'm concerned, Negative SEO is a very real thing in 2012.

Very conpelling video also here on SEOMOZ:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/negative-...teboard-friday

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Matt121

12 years ago

Originally Posted by condra

I find it hard to see why Google wouldn't just completely discount crummy backlinks.

Perhaps they think this would encourage people to continue to buy backlinks anyway, because they would have nothing to lose.

It looks to me like Google is getting better at tackling spam and premium backlinks, etc, but Negative SEO is a byproduct.

I think social is gonna continue to be a crucial part of SEO in the future, as Google gets better at identifying genuine social accounts, and natural discussion.

For now though, as far as I'm concerned, Negative SEO is a very real thing in 2012.

Very conpelling video also here on SEOMOZ:
Negative SEO: Myths, Realities, and Precautions - Whiteboard Friday | SEOmoz

It is in fact, very very real. Negative backlinks will reduce the ranking of your site on search engines, especially to Google. This is usually done by doing black hat SEO methods to which I do not recommend. It's very easy to do and spread these links but it will most definitely hurt your site's ranking.

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Ryan David

12 years ago

I'm not sure why people would think it's not possible. If you can do harm to your own site by linking, why wouldn't you be able to do harm to another site?

If the backlink profile is broad, then it's probably fairly difficult. If it's not, then I'd suspect it'd be pretty easy.

Remember the whole topic was fired up when Dan Thies' site got targeted....and it worked. He might've regained some rankings, but it was so high profile that I don't doubt there was some manual fudging on Google's part.

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Negative SEO... Fact or fiction?

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