about negative seo

by 11 replies
13
I honestly believed that Google was right about negative seo that it could not be done. Here are my observations..

It is somewhat true, at least in the sense that you can not deindex a site with negative seo (i am talking about established websites, no idea about new ones) but there is a negative effect.

Back in november, somebody hit my site with really bad links with anchors for (p0rn, viagra pills and some chinese text etc), it didn't have much of an effect except some of my rankings went down 1 or 2 positions. Now this is where it is interesting, after my continued link-building, i still ranked on page 1 but that #1 spot seems impossible. It took 2 or 3 good links in past to hit the top 3 (i am an authority in my niche), now i am pointing 20+ links for a keyword that is #3 when it was #1 before the attack.

So there definitely is a toxic effect in that it takes a lot more 'juice' to hit the top spots and way more expensive. Google probably just stopped de-indexing sites to stop people from complaining about their sites being hit with neg seo.

Is it impossible to overcome the effects ? Not really but you have to have the same number or greater than the number of toxic links pointing to you. I believe that is how big brands work that you can't hit them with neg seo because the # of good links are greater/stronger than # of bad links.
#search engine optimization #negative #seo
  • I bet there's some algorithmic weight in your issue I think Negative SEO works and it's profitable because sometimes there is a lot of money involved in those falls. It's not the same to be #1 or #3 , your CTR varies significantly.. unless your brand is better known, in which case you probably will lose much less. I guess that's what you have to work from now on, sorry!
  • Negative SEO never caused websites to get deindexed.

    To say that you do not believe in negative SEO means you do not think that Penguin exists. If Penguin exists and can destroy the rankings of a website using spammy links, then negative SEO exists.

    It is not going to work in every single case. You are not going to get Best Buy dropped out of the top 500 by blasting it with blog comments. You could destroy someone's little affiliate site promoting electronics though.
    • [1] reply
    • The thing is you have to take every advice given in SEO with a grain of salt because everybody is an expert and there are differing advices and most advice is also exaggerated. I have heard differing things about negative seo (most claiming of a google sandbox and some saying it doesn't even exist) and well, i see now.

      I would be interested to know what are your thoughts on anchor text ratio Mike ?. Every blog out there about seo mentions a lot of exact match anchors are a no-no and it baffles me to see other competing sites in my niche ranking with 53% anchor text being exact match!. It is like Penguin doesn't even exist. Some day, i am going to do an experiment and point 90% links with exact anchors (good quality links obviously) and end this confusion. Out of funds right now though
      • [1] reply
  • It may not be immediate or devastating, but there is an effect.

    Silly people will say that's racist when talking about chinese text....
    but it's not.

    Google has no idea if the webmaster is doing such things or not.
    It would make little sense for google to send a webmaster a message
    saying they are guilty of webspam, but not caring if it's done by a
    3rd party. They have no idea who is doing it.

    Over time, it could have a devastating effect, especially if you are not
    an established, authoritative site. No amount of spam junk will take a site
    down...

    But google took a whole bunch of turkish news sites off the map a while ago...

    Google has always said to do good things to outweigh anything bad.

    For some sites and for people who will not listen to reality, they will be in
    for quite a shock.

    And that, my friends, is NOT racist. I have no idea why racism comes up when
    talking about webspam and the harm it can do to unsuspecting webmasters.

    Paul
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • You seem to be straw manning my comment from another thread, and omitting a fair bit of background. That's not what that thread was about, and that's not what your trolling was about either. Dismiss an entire nation with baseless and ignorant claims, and you may get that sort of comments back at you. Also, it has nothing to do with this thread or web spam in general.

      Come on, Paul. I thought you were above this kind of crap. Now you're basically running around, going "waa", and telling random people how someone was mean to you. You should be the thick-skinned resident troll.
    • Google is smarter enough to think that those negative SEOs are coming from your site and as a webmaster we need to disavow those bad links but it will take time maybe weeks, months, years and who knows. Most importantly it is better to establish your site from your targeted users by overcoming those spam links rather than consuming your time in removing those negative links.
      • [1] reply
  • Agree 100% that unless you are a VERY well known site with a brand that is manually reviewed, then negative SEO does exist. Obviously new sites that get a bunch of spammy links will rank extremely poorly, I know from personal experience, but even established ones can still be tarnished.
  • Banned
    I have no experience with negative SEO. So that I can't explain enough about it, but I can say that the name belongs to negative, than there is definitely something wrong with it.
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    about negative seo

    I honestly believed that Google was right about negative seo that it could not be done. Here are my observations.. It is somewhat true, at least in the sense that you can not deindex a site with negative seo (i am talking about established websites, no idea about new ones) but there is a negative effect.