Negative SEO - The Death of SEO

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Since the advancement of Google towards eliminating link schemes and unnatural link profiles, we've seen some interesting things occur. One of the most interesting aspects of the current search engine environment is the advent of negative SEO.

I'm not in any way against Google removing link schemes from the equation. BMR and ALN getting deindexed might be the best thing happening to SEO in years.

But then again, it might also be the worst. A lot of people use these services on great sites that attract visitors with quality content.

As these sites drop in the search engines, they are usually replaced by even worse results, which leads me to question Google's actions, as I always do.

But here's the real problem that might just kill SEO...

Given the new rules on unnatural link building that Google has introduced, you can destroy a competitor's website without even owning it or getting access to it.

I have read in countless forums about this sort of thing occurring. The message shows up in GWT that unnatural links have been detected. A few weeks later, the site gets hit with a huge penalty.

If Google continues in the direction they are going right now, two things will happen, neither of which will benefit the searcher or the SEO, or even Google:

1. SERPs will look chaotic. Due to the difficult of generating rankings, it will be almost impossible for anyone to control, so the front page will go from a refined competition with relevant businesses trying to rank to a complete hodge podge of random crap with no consistency.

2. SEO will die, at least on Google. The rise of negative SEO will make it so impractical and risky to rank that very few people will bother with the risk.

Why bother ranking when a competitor can waltz in, spend 50-100 dollars on Fiverr blasts, and watch as your site tanks a week or two later?

I'm not saying this is for sure the death of SEO and the decline of Google. I'm just saying, why bother taking even just one step in a bad direction.

Google should be a lot more careful than this with penalties.
#search engine optimization #death #negative #seo
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    • Your argument is invalid. Most small businesses rely on countless third parties to thrive. It's almost impossible for a small business to even exist without a third party to generate traffic and increase revenue. Google just happens to be a very large and important third party for an online business.

      Please keep comments on topic.

      Wow. Someone who gets it...

      Only problem is, when SEO gets chaotic, so do search results. What happens when they get so cluttered that searchers can't find anything?

      They go to another search engine.
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  • Well I think that this is for every seo guy goes back to adwords....Google and bing are trying to forcing us to go back to there advertising system...
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  • Like you said these new updates will in no way give them the "quality user experience" they're trying to create for their users.


    I don't see these penalties sticking around for too long when Google sees they're doing the opposite of what they intended
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    • Funny how the solution to so many problems ends up creating more problems in and of itself. Google used to understand this a lot better.

      Now all they care about is getting SEOs to give up and switch to Adwords.
  • Actually Google is constantly split testing and, of course, they WILL do everything they can to give users what they want (quality). Google literally makes millions per day with their search results, so no way they will lose their asset (their algorithm) and let their users go somewhere else. I'm not saying Google is perfect, it certainly isn't, but they learn faster then we do and are smarter then we are. What I mean is that they will adapt, learn of their mistakes and get back with even better results to keep their users happy!
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  • How many times have we heard "SEO is dead" over the past 8 years?

    This is nothing more than a major shakeout. Most sites I'm hearing that are getting that unnatural link warning are thin affiliate sites that have minimal content & no social proof. True, some bigger sites have been affected, but I'm sure that's just a temporary bounce.

    SEO isn't dead, but don't put all of your eggs in one basket, if you get what I mean. Create relations with people in your niche, create social traffic, etc. SEO should be just one of many traffic sources for your site.
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    • Right, but even Google employees have complained about how bad the company has gotten in recent years, not to mention they are getting huge fines from privacy infringements.

      They are a few really bad decisions away from losing out on their market share.

      Funny, because I have been hearing about equal complaints from thin affiliates sites and really high quality sites. It's not a prerequisite that anyone have a thin site in order to build what Google defines as unnatural links.

      Your opinions seem a bit naive in this respect.

      I've read a lot of WF and TP threads like this one:

      Un-natural Links Penalty - Traffic Planet

      Where it's not about the quality...it's about destroying SEOs in general and making SEO so difficult that everyone switches to Adwords.

      And I'm not saying SEO is dead. I'm just saying that it could die a slow, painful death, at least on Google.
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  • I don't see that SEO is going to die with the changes that are taking place. I do agree that not all of the sites that were using BMR and ALN were spam sites. The problem is that many people used it as a means to an end and not simply as a tool to go with other link building practices. I agree with them shutting them down, and I agree that for a brief time frame you may see some changes in the results due to this. I do not however foresee this being a long term problem. As said many of the sites that were dropping were thin affiliate sites that did not offer much in the way of content to their visitors. With those sites dropping, it should give way to sites that have more content, and that are more valuable in the long run.
  • Myth. There is no proof that you can destroy your competition regardless of who they are and what they have by way of their link profile.

    You have been reading in internet marketing forums where people historically have relied on weak and spammy links. Because you can tank weak sites does not mean you can tank any site. Alot of the crying going on now is not even all penalties just sites dropping because their links have been discounted.

    Negative SEO is likely to do nothing but have the weak site owners eliminate each other
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    • Finally, some sense. Thank you.
    • What I am wondering right now is whether the "penalty" from Google is actually that, or if it is simply the loss of link juice due to BMR etc. being deindexed/put out of business.

      For instance, I received the notice of unnatural links in WMT, and a week later my site did drop from the top 3 positions to page 5 in the serps. When I got the message I deleted all links I had gotten through BMR. It was far from all of my links, but a fairly significant percentage. So, is my "penalty" really just my site dropping due to the loss of the links? Judging by the message from Google, it would seem that my site would be deindexed, but that has not happened. Right now I am just waiting it out. Interesting times indeed.......
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    • I did a test the other day and blasted about 100K links in one week (xrumer) to one of the old websites and watched it in sescout in after 2 weeks it went to page 3, it's been 1 month since, it still there, so yeah no proof.
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  • I just finished reading a post at Negative SEO On The Rise its very alarming
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    • I'm really not the only one that is thinking any of this stuff. I appreciate the post.

      And he's right. Between Google answers in search results and negative SEO, every SEO in here could be out of a job within a year or two. It's brutal.
  • Banned
    I don't even know where to start, lol.

    So you destroy the #1 page in the SERPs for your keyword, so what, what about the other thousands of sites/pages that keep lining up to get the #1 spot (per keyword).

    You'll go bankrupt trying to finance these deadly links for all your keywords, or possibly one keyword.
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    • Maybe, maybe not.

      Perhaps you maintain a white hat link profile, get yourself up onto page 1 or page 2, then just go about blasting XRumer spam on every site other than yours.

      Spam is often times so cheap you can do this and it won't hurt you that much.

      It just depends how the numbers work out. If Google continues in this direction, the numbers might end up being more practical to get competitors banned than to work really hard to hit number one.
  • From this point forward, please do not post in this thread unless it is in relation to negative SEO. I am done having ego battles with people. Period.
  • I agree with Cataclysm's points, I believe things are becoming more unstable and Google in a bold effort is trying to crowd control with the deindexing of blog networks.

    Its a never ending cycle, and it is clear that the brokenness and the instability of the search engines is hurting both good and bad websites.

    As for this little dispute (which I find to be a common theme on the warrior forum, I'm not sure why people can't stick to the issues instead of using words that put others down like "whining" "low life", etc.)
    ^^^^^^^^^^
    I'm noticing a trend from certain warriors and its time to focus more on the issues guys instead of being so self-absorbed.

    The hypocrisy needs to come to an end, this isn't fight night, this is people coming together discussing issues (agreeing or not agreeing), and it amazes me that half the threads that get started on here are met with some pretty damn rude responses.

    Lets get back to the topic and discuss constructive ideas.
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    • Theres a whole lot of rudeness in this thread but people have a selective bias based on what point of view they agree with. saying that people are sitting with their "thumbs up their asses" is downright rude and at that point no one was getting into anything but issues and expressing their views. Posting people URLs, linking websites and URls jsut to dig dirt is just what I called it. No apologies. No matter how we disagree there are some things we don't have to do. incidentally its always better not to sling mud while you are calling for it to stop. Implying anyone is a hypocrite in this thread and not being genuine about what they hold is just another brand of "fight night"

      But on point like you say - isn't really this whole thread just "fight night" with Google? Some marketers got slapped by Google and the knee jerk reaction is to hope and think that Google will go down for it?

      What exact constructive ideas are going to come out of cursing Google and putting titles up about the death of SEO? I've said this before and its just common sense once you think about it for any other business endeavor

      What business model will ever survive that thinks that its in a war with its main advertising source?

      Better to get out of that business or go seek another advertising source. The bottom line is that you can look all over the internet and the ones doing the most crying are marketers. The average user of search for Google is noticing no big difference and probably never will.

      So go ahead and think the wheel are coming off Google's train but I would love to see what is either actionable or constructive as you allege this thread can be if that is the case. None of you are going to set policy at Google so its all pointless. Thats exactly what I mean by whining. It doesn't accomplish a single actionable thing to do to move forward. nada. The overwhelming thing people will take away is that they might as well throw up their hands and abandon SEO which is totally groundless.
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  • As Google gets better at determining on-page quality, you have to assume that content will start playing a much bigger role in the rankings. You can already see this over the course of the last five years or so. Whether or not they will get perfect at it will depend on a lot of different things and is up to opinion.

    But look at it like this - what does a natural link profile look like. When a site goes viral and blows up on social media, is that unnatural? How about social bookmarks? I think the best way to protect yourself is to always diversify your backlink profile as much as possible. Diversified Links + Great Content = Long term success. If you notice, most of the people having a hard time were trying to cut corners content wise, or found one type of link that worked and ran wild with it.
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  • hey use link buliding and articles submission and get lot off visitor
  • Why use xrumer? Just use aln and linkmonster with 1 anchor text lol
  • I have my own opinion for this. if thing like this go on unconhtrolled, google will receive so many complains from webmasters, thus forcing them to change their algo back to the old panda. negative SEO will no longer exist and the old SEO will be revived.

    In short, if you want the old SEO stay on the line, start doing negative SEO now. hammer your competitors with thousands of backlinks
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    • This is what I am hoping for honestly.

      Some people like to think that because I make a doomsday prediction about the potential death of SEO that that's what I want. It's not.

      I want things to make sense again like they did a few patches ago and for webmasters not to be afraid to use SEO to build their business like they are starting to be.
    • Well my challenge remains and I see no one wants to take it


      What you all fail to realize is that no one is sharing the sites or the serps they or their competitors are getting whacked in (and thats for obvious legit reasons) so this talk that you can now whack any site you want and cause it to tumble is being backed up by air. Feel free to misunderstand that point but for those who want to think further -

      What has been proven is that you can knock down some sites in some serps but seriously the things Imers go for is hardly representative of every kind of serp so the air is claiming on the basis of reading some Im forums that now all sites can be taken out by unnatural links.

      Furthermore all this running around like chicken little ignores the plain facts. Negative SEO from unnatural links has been a possibility for MONTHS not just recently. Some people act like this is new and its going to change all of SEO. For goodness sake READ

      Google's Sending Webmaster Notifications About Bad Links Pointing At Their Sites

      Notice the date? We are four months away from this being around for a year and when you are not looking for your keywords and doing a regular search have you noticed the whole landscape changing? NO enterprising black hatter out there in all this time thought to take out everyone on the first page for "car insurance" "make money online" or even the lowly "backlinks" serp where the top three has remained unchanged for a year?

      We go back and forth between two extremes on this board and in IM SEO. Either Google is so super smart they can read your mind and they know everything or Google is so stupid they will never be able to detect my obvious link spam and if they do and slap me it will lead to the destruction of Google's search results and the end of the world......or ....um... The death of SEO.
  • Has any website been deindexed for "unnatural link profiles"? This update was for a shakeup. It won't last. Especially when Google gets bombarded (and negative publicity) for sandboxing websites that are getting hit by their competitors.

    On site SEO is more important than ever. But I doubt the "unnatural link profile" thing will stick around. We're going to see lots of folks getting smacked by google who don't build links.
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    • Websites that rank don't get deindexed. Websites that link via unnatural linking and get caught do. I've seen it happen countless times.

      Then what usually happens is a penalty gets transferred to the site after the pages get deindexed.

      And I hope you're right about the "not lasting" bit.
  • I've just had my most valuable property crash on its best keywords. It is going from a handsome revenue to peanuts, overnight. I've been writing spins for it for about a year, many many articles pointing at it.

    On the other hand, I have a very similar site targeting a niche in a similar way, and have been writing spins for it in the same way. It was barely affected by this update. But this site is only 3 months old, it just doesn't have nearly the quantity of article links pointing at it.

    Being that this second site is not much affected yet... If I tried out negative SEO on competitors, it would be some long distant time till it had the desired effect, and given the sheer number of competitors, it just isn't practical.

    So if you've been leaning heavily on BMR/ALN for a year or more, Cutts and crew are grabbing you directly by the gonads now. They aren't fooling around, they've thought through what they need to do to surgically remove the sites ranked through our blog article networks.
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  • SEO by definition will never die as long as search engines exist.

    If you are getting hit by these penalties then you are simply behind on the learning curve, same as the people who were still buying links based on PR even when it was general knowledge that PR was a reduced value factor.

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    • Yeah but could you imagine how crummy it will get if negative SEO becomes prevalent and how many SEOs might end up out of a job?

      Would really suck.
  • I think these are extremely exciting times. I'm already working on one competitor who's above me at #1 (I'm #2). I'm currently weighing up what's more cost effective in terms of money and time - Take out the competition with negative SEO or build quality backlinks and social signals to overtake said competition.

    On the contrary to what others have said, negative SEO doesn't have to be expensive. Automation with a ridiculous footprint is key, and this doesn't mean same anchor text!

    Google bent me over and shafted me a while back and then preceded to tell me why. That information may now prove invaluable
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    • New member - TODAY. I recently paid Paul a pittance to move my site from complete and utter oblivion to page 2. I thought I was pretty informed and just needed to find a group like this to gain access to the best way and locations for backlinks.

      But the negative SEO thing? ...jeepers.. I have a lot to learn!! I can't thank Paul and Angela enough..

    • Dream on bro. So you blast somebody and they fall whose to say that you will be the recipient of a ranking prize? Yukon nailed it earlier - how many sites are you going to need to blast? Plus sorry but I am going to LOL when the thread is started where someone is honest enough to admit that they blasted some sites, they fell and the guys ranking below them jumped OVER THEM to to the top. ROFL

      I mean in addition to nothing happening to many sites blasted.

      But Neil don't you remember that thread (good thread too by the way) you started last year about this? We tried to duplicate the effect with people throwing all kinds of things at some sites and guess what - for the most part nothing happened.

      Back then everybody was like "impossible you can't tank a site with links". What did we learn? You can't tank every site in every serp BUT those who thought it was impossible to do it to any site were wrong.

      So you already gave us a thread with the proof that you can't assume that you can automatically take out all your competitors.
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  • google is not stupid, they do not penalize sites that easily for what competitors can do.
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    • Actually they did that exact same thing to my client over the weekend. They got the wonderful "unnatural link" message in webmaster tools. Upon further inspection, someone is bombarding my clients website with horrible spam backlinks.

      Google is that stupid. They know many good websites will be taken out during their campaign and they don't care.

      I suggest to anyone who gets that message in their Google Webmaster Tools to blame their competitors are maliciously trying to hurt your rank so they can climb up.
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  • I don't think there is any reason to panic. Keep in mind that sometimes these algorithm changes are temporary, rolling changes to weed out some bad sites, and then things settle down and go back to normal for a period of time. I suspect that is what is going on here. In a few weeks, as has happened in the past when Google seemingly pulls the plug on a lot of sites at once, things will settle down.

    It's not in Google's best interest to allow negative SEO to become prevelent. I would have a bigger worry about the moving toward content-based rankings in that case.
  • I still had a couple of those blog networks subscription around.. Holy thunderin' oxymoron! A thunderbolt of idea stuck me.. Who's interested of negative SEO service here? I still have active subscriptions on most blog networks and perhaps a WSO sales page? It'll go something like this

    100 ALN blast +100 UAW blast + 100 SEO link monster + 100 SEO linkvine = $40

    Thats instant penalty.
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    • Banned
      See If you can bury this thread in the SERPs, it's currently ranking #1 for the keyword phrase:

      Seriously, fire away.
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    • pretty tempting an offfer bro but i doubt if negative SEO really works for some huge authority website with very old domains
  • Sorry but your vast generalization of what I have talked about via this forum and using it to support your intolerant stance on what people should say addressing google is a poor argument with no merit.

    I don't claim to know all the answers, I have had my ups and my downs like many internet marketers and I see now if you didn't follow my point from the previous posts in this thread there is probably little hope of you accepting fault and moving on.

    So lets get to the issues here:

    I'm not sure who taught you negatives were unneccessary, and challenging a power-house company was futile, but you seem to forget that companies like google can disappear fairly quickly.

    Many of the most successful people in the world embrace the negatives, they want to see the other side of the equation because it keeps the situation "real".

    As people that are trying to make income and build solutions, we can't always focus on the positives, and even if someone thinks this may be the downfall of google doesn't mean it can't be met with a respectful response.

    My personal standpoint is google is walking a very thin line right now. As more businesses realize they need to have an online presence, the unstability of the search engine market and SEO could (and is) leading many people to call foul with google.

    Google hasn't come up with a solid solution to distinguish good content from bad content yet. And all their algorithms are simply that, algorithms that can be gamed and abused.

    For someone that promotes a very black hat concept, you should be more aware that this gaming of the search engines isn't a sustainable business model for google if they want to keep their user base satisfied.

    And google realizes this. The big question everyone is trying to figure out is whether google is trying to eliminating link building in general, in other words the only links that you should be gaining are from other people with no such input from yourself.

    That eliminates: Blog networks (Public & Private), Article Marketing, Guest Posting, Web 2.0, Blog Commenting etc.

    So yes, could we be on the verge of the collapse of googles control on the search engines? Absolutely.

    It could also be the other way around, google is a company that wants to make the most profit possible.

    They proved that when they bought out youtube, put ads on videos for partners, and then decided to allow regular users to put ads on their videos too.

    You can stand by and teach unethical solutions, and scoff at people that are trying to wrap their heads around googles true intentions, or we can go over the evidence, what is still at top in the search engines, the replies on matt cutts blog, how google is changing how its search engines display results, etc.
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    • Banned
      This isn't the late 1990's, Google survived the dot com gold rush.

      Google isn't going to disappear.

      [source]






      Isn't that the reason your running an online business, to earn money?

      I doubt you would turn down $10.5 billion in earnings for a single quarter.
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    • Which by interpretation means you have nothing actionable. As suspected. Real on a marketing forum is something people can use. SEO is dying is not real, Google is going down and will be defeated is not real or actionable. Its all just wishes trying to be horses and beggars trying to ride them. Marketers that are in the businesses of thinking about what CAN happen to another company are not making a dime off of prognosticating the doom of Google

      Your "everyone" there is false though. People who know SEO are not trying to figure that out. Its an extreme stance that borders on paranoia. Google has nowhere stated you can't promote your site and that links that come from "input from yourself" are not allowed. How can you be so unaware of SEO offering what you do? It is a common white hat practice to network with webmasters , ask them for links, do press releases and promote your site - all of which is "input from yourself". It is however against you leaving your own links. The difference is huge. there hasn't been a mystery in link building for years as far as google is concerned. Everything that got dinged in the last year were all things we knew they didn't like and would not approve of. Being in denial about that is ridiculous.

      Blasting sites - we knew
      Buying links network or otherwise- we knew
      spinning content - we knew

      Horse feathers. the last time I checked there has to be signs of something significant happening (not alleging something is about to) to talk about being on the "verge of collapse". By that reasoning Microsoft is on the verge of Linux taking over the desktop or Apple is on the verge of being beat out in the tablet market and having to withdraw from that market. There is nothing that signals this hope of yours. All there is is a bunch of marketers stung by the fact that they used links they knew Google didn't like and trying to sooth themselves with the fact that it will now lead to the collapse of Google through negative SEO like they are smarter than everyone else at Google. Offering what I do I have no pretensions that Google does not like it but my entire point is that its ridiculous to be surprised at it or get all upset at them for punishing what they always reserved the right to punish. and most certainly its ridiculous to start gong around discussing the end of SEO on the basis of what was known all along.

      ROFL Thank you for that. Really. I am not offended. In a thread that has talked about arrogance and hypocrisy you could not have done better by illustration than you did there. Waxing about "unethical solutions" when you got dinged for using a SEO network (BMR) yourself? Classic stuff. SO you use the networks I teach people to build in the SEO you charge people for but you can wax about me being unethical for teaching how they are built

      BUt alas sorry I am for working with Google where I can but I never claimed that they nor you set my definition of unethical. I don't subscribe to ANY single company defining what is white as in right and what is black as in wrong. I know of no business that will not use or buy one company to support and promote one of its others business. Google has always both been ridiculous and ignored by some of the top companies in the world (who they continue to rank very highly I might add) when they tell them not to link to their other partner and sister sites with followed links to promoted them. Networks are far more sophisticated and varied than you imagine. As I have said several times I have in the past seen Google link from their own properties (YOutube partner pages in particular) to sites they have a financial interest in. Unethical? IF tomorrow a business man bought a bankrupt company with the only purpose of leveraging its advertising assets he would be heralded for doing smart business.

      At the end of all of that though - theres nothing new offered. Still nothing actionable or constructive. Totally pointless to try and "wrap our heads around intentions" like marketers are a bunch of mind readers. We have a new algo about to come out that no one knows what is in it but so many marketers are making all kinds of projections and claims they have not a clue about until that algo either addresses or fails to address negative SEO or anything else that allegedly is about to "collapse" the number one search engine in the world.

      IF you are a newbie just skip the nonsense and go work on your sites, Nothing to see here.
  • Bottom line is no point bitching and moaning, Google make the rules for there site, either play along or don't, NOTHING you can do about it,

    End of.
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  • I recently had a DMCA takedown request for an article posted to one of my spun blog network sites because the publisher of the article had received a Google penalty to his/her site, so said the legal representative.

    A quick analysis of the Plaintiff's home page sure enough showed the site ranking between pages 6 and 7 of the Google serps for the home page optimised key phrases.

    I analysed the home page using SEO Spyglass and found that many of his/her backlink profile consisted of links from spun networks. More interestingly, the footprint of many of the links/articles was consistent with the footprint of the links/articles I had created and was subsequently penalised for. This leads me to two conclusions:

    1) Google can detect any links created by you to any site you own (Highly Unlikely)
    2) Google can penalise you for links that include this and similar types of footprints (Slightly More Likely).

    The trigger happy folks amongst us will probably interpret 'Negative SEO' as blasting targets with cheap, spammy and worthless links which will probably be discounted as per Google's generic response to the subject.

    However, the more creative individual might look to replicate the offending footprints as a means to manipulate rank.

    Due to the unethical nature of 'Negative SEO' as pointed out by others in this thread, I am no longer interested in pursuing this theory. However my friend, Fat Dave is interested in trying this theory out and I will relay his findings if and when he deems them newsworthy!
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    • And is this new friend Fate Dave an alter ego?

      But tell Fat Dave to at least wait to see if it works with the significant change about to drop in a few weeks. Testing a theory against an algo that is past tense is a waste of time.

      You should put it in a thread like last time. You did a really good job with that one you started before. Good stuff. Wish you the best.
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  • LOL this sucks. I do not even want to create new sites now. I guess im done with SEO until this is all sorted out. I will have to advertise with social sites like twitter, craigslist, facebook, youtube etc.
  • Google knows that statistically 60-70% of users click on organic results. the idea of 'killing' SEO would shake the very structure of natural search. unless Google starts counting links only from Wikipedia and a handful of authoritative sites, SEO will still be around. there are many authority sites with crappy content, and vice versa. Google couldn't possibly place a weight only on 'authoritative' sites, because certain 'non-authoritative' sites might also have good content. Google's mission is to provide the most relevant content to its users so as long as content remains king, it will be hard to 'kill' SEO.
  • My biz partner recently had one of his sites get tanked due to mass, spammy links aimed at him by a competitor.

    On a related and publicly-announced note, so did AffHelper.com. (There's your long-awaited case study).

    Anyone who says Negative SEO is a myth is retarded, or just plain inexperienced. Why would Google be handing out "unnatural linking" notices in WMT if it wasn't possible?

    Do you honestly believe their "algo" is smart enough to determine who paid for, or orchestrated such campaigns, and then match that to WHOIS data or something? Of course not. It's all based on an assumption.

    The bottom line is that anyone with $50 to spend on Fiverr or who has a good handle on using xrumer / scrapebox can bring down heat on another site. If you don't think that's the case and you're so confident about it, then why don't you go and blast 500,000 auto-comments at your own money sites, and prove us all wrong?

    It may not result in de-indexing or penalties necessarily in every case, but it does create problems, and it wastes time.

    Other factors are things like organic profile, etc. What if you want to go and sell your site in a year or so, and someone goes and pollutes your backlink profile with 6-figures worth of **** links? Again, that's a big problem. And it potentially reduces the asset value you've built up.

    Yes, the "answer" is to adapt, focus on marketing, etc. As all the parrots and regurgitating idiots on this forum have been saying. (Blah blah blah - thanks for adding nothing to the conversation.)

    But that doesn't mean this isn't an issue, and anyone who starts attacking others who have been knocked out by stuff like this is nothing more than an arrogant prick in my books, who hasn't been around long enough or built enough sites to realize that Google DOES NOT CARE if you're following their "rules" or not. Their moves ARE political, and they DO have other motivations.

    Sites that I've personally seen get knocked out or deindexed usually end up that way simply because Google doesn't like the product, or the fact that I'm an affiliate in that niche. This is irrespective of user experience or quality, or even what I'm doing for external SEO. This actively happens in niches like Travel and Hotels, among several hundreds of others. (Don't believe me? Read this: Branding & The Cycle | SEO Book.com )

    Also, keep in mind that what we now consider "GrayHat" or "BlackHat" was, just a few years ago, as pure as Mother Theresa. For example, buying text links and mass-syndicating articles.

    Some food for thought

    -Chris
    • [ 3 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • As they say - reading is fundamental. I haven't seen ANYONE ANYWHERE say that you cannot tank some sites . Before you start throwing around the word retarded at least learn how to read.

      The point is and which despite all the blather and throwing around of insults and name calling you are doing you cannot give any evidence for is that you can tank ANY site at will. It has NOT been demonstrated that ALL sites can be blasted to kingdom come. Google could care less if they take out a few good with 10,000 bad. They don't give a rip unless all the good sites they love are tanked and I aint seeing that in the serps yet

      Second neither you nor anyone else in this thread has demonstrated that getting all hot under the collar and whining incessantly about the changes is going to do anything to change Google's minds. They LIKE even LOVE that marketers are screaming

      Well welcome to the real world that doesn't care a hoot about affiliate marketing. Why you and ever other marketer are so surprised by this i have no idea.

      Meanwhile with all the retarded , parrots name calling you are throwing around (which you were thanked readily by those who CLAIMED they were on the side of civility only a few days ago when it suited them) I must have missed where you changed the dialogue and actually gave anyone something ACTIONABLE TO DO. With all the talk of adding something you failed to do so yourself.
      • [1] reply
  • Th whole process of constantly changing ranking rules is to force paid advertising on adwords - thats what will eventually be the only sites shown.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • [DELETED]
  • You can easily get your competition slapped (as long as your competition isn't youtube ).

    Say for example you rank well for a term, along comes a site that is fairly new and is creeping up behind you, all you'd have to do is spam link the site with the same keyword anchor text...As the site is new Google is obviously going to think its their attempt to jump up the rankings, and their will be nothing you can do about it if someone does it to you.

    Not just for new sites, either, as long as the site isn't a big authroity site I see no reason why you can't get them bitch-slapped.

    Thing is, their isn't a lot Google can do about it and know for certain it wasn't you and that it was someone else who done it, which is very worrying.
  • If the site has some authority in-coming links, logically it would be harder to slap in this way.
  • I posted this on another forum and it applies here. Negative SEO is very real and is certainly a rapidly-growing problem right now, I would not let people tell you guys otherwise. We all can only hope that with enough exposure on this issue that maybe Google will do the responsible thing here. Hopefully they won't force business owners that are interested in growing their online presence to continue operating in an environment where their competitors ALONE can severely negatively impact their online-based revenue/rankings:

    Lolz this story just keeps getting better and better. So, Google used to say competitors cannot harm your site: "There is nothing competitors can do to harm your site." Then they recently changed that message in their webmaster guidelines to state: "There is ALMOST nothing competitors can do to harm your site."

    Now, they've unleashed this public relations gem for the webmaster community:

    Can competitors harm ranking? - Webmaster Tools Help

    What I find hilarious is the last sentence in particular: "Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don't control the content of these pages." Umm, isn't that what the majority of webmasters/publishers on the Internet do too, and just like Google, webmasters/publishers have ZERO CONTROL over the content of other web pages...including the links they create.

    What I DON'T find hilarious is coming across posts like this on DP while researching this issue and knowing with certainty this type of thing is actively going on all over the place and increasingly becoming more popular as Google and friends continue to dance around the giant elephant in the room:

    [METHOD] Illuminati Link Domination Strategy

    Google does not have enough data for reliability purposes other than data related to links to base the majority of their crap off of right now IMO, obviously they're heading for much more social/Author rank, but they are certainly a ways off and will need to do link evaluations for the foreseeable future. Taking this route seems pretty risky from a PR standpoint... It should be an interesting year ahead is all I can say...GETCHAAAA POPCORRRRRRN
  • Even most of the recent penalties are bouncing back according to people affected, most google penalties are timed, i lost a lot of backlinks to my resort site in january, it kicked me way down for about a month then back to where i was before
  • Regardless of if the penalties are timed or not, business owners should not have to suffer for half a year or whatever it may be all because some competitor blasted their site and reported it for paid links, etc...
  • I would like to think this is just the awkward stage until google gets their algorithm like they want it. I think SEO will still be around, but you will just have to be careful who you link your site too.

    I also think google is smart enough to tell if someone is purposely trying to get you banned, or i would like to think this...
  • If site X gets hit with a fiverr gig, how is Google going to know who ordered it?
  • So should Google ignore all the bad backlinks and only consider the good ones ?
    In that case there will be a chaos, as SEO people will know they can do whatever they want.
    • [1] reply
    • No.

      Consider the three applicable possibilities:

      a) Google realizes a link is "bad" and discounts it.
      b) Google realizes a link is "bad" and has it negatively affect the site it's pointing to.
      c) Google doesn't realize the link is "bad" and treats it as any other link.

      You are claiming that if !b then c. That is incorrect because Google will still know the link is "bad". The truth is if !b then a.

      In case c nothing changes regardless of how Google treats the bad links, because Google doesn't realize c is a bad link and so could neither apply a penalty or discount it.

      The real difference between a and b is simply that b allows 3rd parties to hurt a website. There is no difference in how people will link to their own sites because in both cases a and b, a knowledgeable SEO isn't going to want to build the links to their own site, and cases where a webmaster or SEO is unaware, they aren't going to be able to modify their actions to account for the things they are not aware of.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • For every problem in google algo you can find a solution. This is what SEO is all about. If you can't stay one step ahead, don't play.
  • Actually, I disagree. Google is not some broke company without financial backing, no and resounding heck no,

    Google got cake man they have scientist on staff they know how to bring up good quality results...

    I have done tons of searches on Google they all have been right on the money... I don't think you understand how many sites are out there right now... That number is nearing a billion... 612,843,429 to be exact..

    Do you think out of so many sites Google can't find a relevant site to show up in the search instead of some seo guru trying to make cake on Google...

    I don't think you understand how powerful Google is or how vast the internet is...

    I have always gotten great results lately when searching in Google. I don't think what your saying is going to happen...
  • Out of this thread, here's what I think:

    1. Google will do whatever it wants regardless of anything we say.
    2. The 2 Mikes know of WTF they speak and so I'll be learning from them as much as I can.
    3. Can we all just positively focus on our own sites rather than worrying about the other guy's?
  • Taking bets now on who will be the last poster between Mike or Joe.....
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Is this a constructive comment?

    Why don't you guys converse via PM if it isn't?

    Jeez.
    • [1] reply
    • Woah nelly no. If he wants to call people retarded and then get upset when people respond to it - and its out of line no matter who it was directed at - then let him do it in public where a mod can deal with him not to a PM box.

      Don't worry I have no need to respond to either of them again. Theres been enough to see that there are plenty of people with egos out of this world in this thread and they can see where the name calling and cursing has come from as well.

      I will add this though in defense of truly mentally retarded people since he has used the term again. I know a few mentally retarded people, one very well, and they are some of the sweetest people I know. Geniuses - I'd say even marvelous savants - when it comes to love and caring (And what else really matters). If some classless Forum poster thinks mentally retarded is a derogatory term he's free to wrap himself in that provincial backward thinking because he is showing his own lack of mental sophistication,

      So retarded in the way that those beautiful people I know are? I own it and hope one day its true.
  • It's scary that years of hard work can be destroyed by a ruthless competitor. I had always heard that you couldn't be hurt by competitors who use black hat tricks to link to your site since you can't control what others do. If Google has changed their policy on this, that would be huge.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • i guess the best strategy is to always have different channels to bring you traffic no matter what google is doing or whether seo is working fine...i myself have started to look into diversification because i can't sell seo to clients if i know it isn't working as it should be.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply

    • I can understand that viewpoint. But some guys seem to enjoy going off topic and seeing who's got the biggest **** and don't actually provide any useable information:


      "I'm going to get a ferrari and a pool one day, 700 employees, and I've been doing seo for 40 years and I'm going to get a fit wife, so if I say that google are idiots then they must be." etc...
      • [1] reply
  • Still discussing SEO (how da **** THAT ain't funny? :p)...?

    Nothing new. Been saying this lat least since October/November '11. Probably last updates rolled out this one to you folks, but in Google.pt this was available long time... and for those of you wondering "who da **** is this moron" better check my posts about THIS last year.

    It was clear as water people could harm competitors.

    Edit:     Oh I see this is now in the "you're a retard" section. Good. Thanks for reminding me again why I rarely visit this supa-dupa sub-forum.

    Have a good day!
  • Maybe it is for the better. Fake backlinks like blog comments and spam sites with pyramids gets little or not value and social links gets a boost. This means people will need better content on their website that people will actually like to share with their friends.
  • I wonder what the legal ramifications are for purposefully and aggressively harming another company's income and reputation for your own company's gain.
  • Banned
    It's been exactly one week since I asked anyone that thinks they can do negative SEO to have this forum thread removed from the SERPs for it's exact page title/keywords.

    This thread still ranks #1 in Google SERPs for it's thread/page title Negative SEO - The Death of SEO.

    I see a bunch of smoke.
    • [2] replies
    • Are you claiming negative SEO can't work?
    • Whilst I'm a firm believer that negative SEO is possible, I also think that anyone who trys to tank a site that has domain age and/or domain authority is completely waisting their time and money. I believe the target site has to match a set citeria, which the Warrior forum does not!

      • [1] reply
  • I posted this elsewhere,

    Things are finally getting interesting lol:

    https://groups.google.com/a/googlepr...k/-Lb4TE0yuqIJ

    The discussion there and Mu's response does seem to indicate there may be some type of "penalty" involved in this whole deal or whatever name we wanna call it, and if so IS based on a certain length(s) of time per usual Google practice.

    Mu says that he recommends NOT to wait it out and people should submit the reconsideration request (even if they don't have an idea if their drop was due to algo or manual reasons etc) which leads me to that conclusion, BUT it makes you wonder the way he phrases things. Cryptic fear-mongering with a corporate touch at its finest. How long for some people is gonna be the question I guess...

    I'm hoping that thread goes viral especially "coolguy's" post lol...

    I'd say this is a pretty clear indicator that you can "penalize" the majority of newer, less established websites owned by average individuals that make up the majority of the Internet. The severity/length of time the "penalty" lasts is probably dependent on some other factors we won't know.

    How anyone could read that discussion there and then conclude that you can't do that to just about any URL owned by an average Warrior here...I have no clue, because this type of thing is currently happening all around us. I don't care to argue with folks that don't believe is happening, because evidence certainly suggests otherwise.

    The thing is, competitors don't even have to "tank" your site several places/pages to do damage, now that we know incoming links can directly harm you in certain ways, it is very easy for competitors to REALLY "junk up" your website's backlink portfolio. WMT is only going to show you SOME stuff, imagine the backilink scanning power and vast knowledge of inbound links that Google now has, all being organized into type, class, etc...

    So your competition can directly hurt your assets (many of my own websites I consider assets, dunno about others). What if they send links that don't trigger any filters today, but when you go to sell some of your assets in a year the buyers get weary looking at the type of inbound links your assets have accumulated over the years? etc...

    Hell, certain types of links could basically be a "ticking time bomb" for some people's assets. Meaning if Google doesn't have an issue with them now, they might 6 months from now. Just the tip of the iceberg of things to consider in this type of "eco-system" that apparently is existing...
  • @Mike Anthony

    #1) you mentioned that sites rise and fall all the time and that noone know s why, then in another sentence you seem to say that you know for sure noone has tanked a site these 2 arguements seem mutally exclusive.

    #2) you say I cant tell how many sites i need to ank, but honestly atleast in my niche that is not true. Most of the keyowrds I pay attention to hve a VERY steady top 5 . My biggest moneymaker has had the same top 3 since i moved into #3 a long time ago. Although numbr 1 is an exact phrase match for wikipedia and would probably be immune to such attacks but the 2nd is an im site like mine and could certainly be vulnerable.

    #3) I think we should all agree that unless the creator does soemthing extremely stupid google has no idea who crated a link on a webpage, especially automated junk, secondly we can agree negative seo is a complete change from long standing and well considered google policy. IMO there are very good reasons why that policy stood for so long

    #4) you seem to make the arguement that what google does behind the scenes in unknowable (certanly true) but then use that arguement to prove nothing has ever happened when if it had we are likely never to have heard about it.

    #5) I see no benefit to negative seo, if google is so good at spotting spam links then they can easily discount them, if they are not it is dangerous to throw around penalties. But in the end you are rght they are a private company and can do what they want.
  • I am seeing some truly ugly "results" being reported by many trusted folks in the industry. Things are not looking very optimistic regarding this issue I'm afraid...
  • I can't believe there are still people who don't believe in link penalty. Also - $50-100??? What are you talking about? Penalizing a less-than-two-months old site shouldn't take more than 10 bucks and you would send it to nowhere for months (usually permanently). I got one of my sites out of google for good (been gone for ~2 months) with 5 web 2.0s (UNIQUE, non spun) with comment links to them. The site had several 1000-word articles too (UNIQUE). The new algo will prevent sites from ranking sometimes without good reason.

    BTW, the new update has definitely upped the quality of G search results - 5-word dashed-domains and no-content godaddy expired sites are common place on the front page now. I'm officially switching to bing for my searches.

    Negative seo is so easy to do its a joke. However - only on new domains. Doing neg. seo on authority sites won't do anything IMO. This si exactly the reasons why google won't bother changing this.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • If you want to beat your competition at Google, you hire someone to add thousands of backlinks from bad sites toward the competitor site. Will Google ban the competitor site? I think Google will not ban it because of the bad backlinks.

    Only bad content of a site (SEO on page) can be banned by Google, not backlinks (SEO off page).
    • [2] replies
  • I've been using Bing for quite a while. Google is just garbage.

    There will never be a death of SEO because something must be used to rank websites to return in response to a search query. Google talks about hundreds of ranking factors continually being tweaked. But I'm not sure Google has any clue how to spot relevancy or quality, so it is falling back to showing major 'brand' websites for many searches.

    .
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    Negative SEO - The Death of SEO

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