Dan Thies and negative SEO

by 80 replies
96
It seems that Dan Thies is one more victim of negative SEO, as you can see it here: Google Groups .

IMO, If google doesn't do something about crazy stuff that has been going on lately, I don't think they will last much longer.

Slix
#search engine optimization #dan #dan thies #negative #negative seo #seo #thies #unnatural links
  • I dunno. These penalties are only a small portion of the online community, even though we complain about them so much.

    It may or may not harm them in any way.
  • Wow... this is crazy. People already setting up Negative SEO businesses.
    • [2] replies
    • Banned
      That guy can't prove anything.

      As far as we know he could be the one that created the links & wants to stir things up in the SEO community to drive more traffic/sales on his own sites.

      If he can't prove anything one way or the other, why would he even bother posting on the Google forum?
    • Starting?

      Dude, back in October/November last year, WE warned you guys! This is just the beginning. Google opened a huge box and NOW they won't be able to fix it - unless they re-do a big part of their algo.

      Sad news for all IM industry.
      • [1] reply
  • It's painfully obvious that you can ruin years of someone's hard work by using negative SEO. Wait until your average Joe find out about this - it's gonna be mayhem.
    • [1] reply
    • Did you see this moronic response on the Google thread:

      Although apparently not from Google, this is the type of response Google provides.

      Instead of working on your site, a competitor could make you spend endless amounts of time creating "documentation," preparing a Google Docs file, and submitting endless requests for reconsideration.

      When you think about it, does Google really want a dossier, argument, and report about every website prepared by webmasters about what links they did not create, and have it reviewed by someone?

      And what about most of the planet which does not have a Google Webmaster Account?

      .
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • Exactly... I have no idea how they've come up with this "strategy". It seems so retarded.

    Not to mention there is no way you could remove 100k+ xrummer links...doh.
  • Banned
    Not last any longer? Google doesn't need us.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Really? Think again.
  • Banned
    Interesting read, thanks for sharing
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Isn't he the same guy that tweeted Cutts to congratulate him on cleaning up the blog network spam?
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • SEO is getting too intense for me -____-
  • Oh my. What a good laugh, thanks OP!
  • I've just read it again, and he's received the message, like lots of people using WMT will have, but he also says it hasn't affected his site, like it won't have affected lots of people's sites.
    • [2] replies
  • Negative SEO has been possible for years. It's great to see a 'gooroo' figuring it out a few years late
  • [DELETED]
  • It gets better....

    CASE STUDY: Negative SEO - Results - Main Backlinks/SEO Discussion - Traffic Planet
  • it's sucks
  • I think those users who are using illegal software's then this kind of message Google send to users
  • Incoming links can and DO hurt rankings. We (me, you...) have absolutely no control over those links and there is no way to remove them. Deal with it, I guess.

    Google no longer state that incoming links can't hurt you. They say "we're doing our best to make sure your competitors can't hurt your rankings", we all know what that means.

    So yeah, deal with it. I think this is all temporary... maybe there's a machine learning algo in progress and things will go back to better once it's finished re-evaluating the whole ****ing internet. Who knows?

    Seriously, learning algorithms can take weeks/month/years to complete. I'm sure they've tested things well with smaller samples and we're currently in some sort of transition stage. The GWT messages are a legal thing, nothing else. Just like the changes in their Webmaster FAQs/Guidelines/Whatever and all that stuff. You have to be very naive not to see this. Google appears to be confident in their actions, probably for a reasons better/bigger than most people could even begin to understand (from a technical point of view).
  • Setting up negative SEO will be harm and will not produce results for longer period of time.
  • Don't not need to destroy Google. Build your backlinks with white hat SEO. Then run with Google and beat your competitor.)
    • [2] replies
    • Awesome case study right there!! Wow

      Building ANY backlinks = black hat according to Google

    • Yeah, whatever. If that works for you, then go ahead and "run with Google." Good luck!
  • negative SEO is not good , it should be penaltied by Google.
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
  • Wow this thread was an interesting read, negativeseo like others I don't agree with what you do but I did appreciate the insight to your methods. I'll leave the whole moral judgement thing out of it.

    I've always been one to believe links can't affect SERP's negatively, especially if the website is established (aged) and already has quality links pointing to it. But these case studies and new info about 'negative seo' proves all that wrong.

    Very shocking to me that Google would let this happen considering they're the industry leader. Anyways I think it's important for all of us who work with SEO to know about this whether we agree with it or not.
  • I think what NegativeSEO did was highly unethical, but I sure appreciated reading his post.

    It would be very hard for me to destroy someone's site. How would I know if the owner of the site was some poor struggling mama who needed to support her children? How could you ever live with doing something so horrible to another human being?

    As far as the legality of negative SEO, I doubt it would be against the law. How would the website owner ever find out who was responsible for torching his site? Especially since Google says negative SEO doesn't exist. How could you be prosecuted for something that Google claims doesn't happen?

    Why doesn't Google just ignore the links instead of punishing the sites? That would eliminate the possibility of negative SEO and stop most of the internet spamming that is going on.

    I'm sickened that negative SEO is actually a possibility.
  • I'm a NegativeSEO supporter... In such that I can appreciate what was done and think people need to wake up if they think it's anything besides the reality of what needed to happen.

    Fact is, there's a rumor of an organized and prolonged 'click attack' to devalue adsense advertising. Everyone will call that skeezy and dirty, etc... But what does google expect when they treat their publishers like crap?

    Well... What did they expect when negative SEO became a reality?

    What, they get to smack everyone else in the face and not get the favor returned? Why, what makes them special?

    Why is this shocking anyone and further more... Why attack the guy? It's an obvious and predictable conclusion and I'm glad N.SEO is doing what he's doing. Blame Google for giving people the weapon and motivation to use it... Congratulate this guy for the time, effort, and research.
    • [1] reply
    • They don't 'smack everyone in the face', the webmasters that get Google slapped are generally using methods that manipulate their system and cause lower quality search results. Google's updates are meant to provide higher quality results, which makes sense considering they're a business and have to provide quality products to their users to stay alive.

      This update might enable others to 'smack' innocent webmasters but do you really think Google will leave that door open for a long period of time? Obviously this whole 'negative seo' thing is gaining publicity and more and more people will use it to their advantage. When the search results drop in quality Google will make changes and close the loopholes.

      It's their business! They can do whatever the hell they want! Just like you can choose a business model that doesn't involve Google.
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  • Both of you are painfully clueless. I'll have a discussion, but I can't fix a fundamental thought process problem.

    Your forum here is loaded with good honest people negatively harmed by google. You having your opinion on why that is ... Well that's your opinion.

    I'm not going to spend 100 posts talking to a crazy person
    • [3] replies
    • The discussion has value. That sort of comment doesn't, and it's not likely to lead to any productive end in this circumstance.


      Paul
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • Fundamental thought process problem? Instead of focusing outward try focusing inward and changing your presuppositions that Google is out to get everyone, and the whole 'us against them' mentality. It's not going to get you anywhere.

      As far as good honest people being harmed negatively, every story I read so far (aside from negatvieseo's case study) admitted to building backlinks. I'm not trying to preach white hat seo, I take risks like many others here when the risk is worth it. But #1 don't base your whole business on manipulating Google when it obviously won't last (obvious considering their goals and past record) and #2 like I said Google will fix the loopholes. Yes that is my opinion but I'm pretty sure it's common sense.

      You along with a few others here have this radical idea that spammers are going to take over and the end is near for Google. And you call us crazy?

      Edit: Sorry Paul just noticed your post above, will try to bring the tone down to a more neutral level.
    • I can't either so good luck to you as you move along

      Like I said we are grown ups. Most of us knew we were gaming and are looking for ways to move forward. Whining about how Google harmed us doesn't do a stick of good and frankly this push to utilize negative SEo is just short sighted and strategically dumb (not saying you are saying the strategy when thought through is) . It assumes one of two illogical things

      A) that the other people you use it on will just sit there while you tank them and not turn around and tank you. Competitive serps won't have that result. Its all good for weak serps where people don't know anything going on with SEO but go ahead and tank a site of mine with backlinks and you won't be at the top for very long. I'll return the favor and so would any SEO worth his sauce. So its for weak serps where no real SEO working.

      B) that as a campaign against Google they will return to the status Quo rather than put safeguards in that will STILL leave marketers without many options for links that matter.

      So frankly go for it . Some of us will leave you guys to it and you can burn your wheels for us while we move ahead with building things that last and will survive the change that will inevitably come.
  • Dan Thies' response comment on SEOBook's article on the matter:

    GoogleBowling, Negative SEO & Outing | SEO Book.com
  • Dan's website wont tank because they made it public, so basically Google's engineers will exclude his site from being penalized but if a small business gets this amount of links then it will tank and get penalized...

    Everything is considered blackhat now, even guest blogging! Google wants you to get links without building them so people link to you if you have great content but the question is how would people get my content if I don't rank..

    The whole argument about quality content is BS..Google cannot value your content if its quality or no "as long as its written in a good way"

    As I said before, Google wants us to write what they want even if we wont rank..but alot of the sites that are ranking have rubbish content.

    If we want to depend on Google then we should accept their terms, at the end its their service, as much as I hate to say it but its their search engine and they can do what they want..
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  • Guy's a big mouth butt kisser anyway. deserves it
    • [1] reply
    • Dan Thies sort of apologized for the Matt Cutts tweet in the thread at Traffic Planet. He said something like he shouldn't have said it (it was insensitive) and he was just trying to get information out of Cutts that could benefit his readers.

      He also said that the decreased rankings could have been caused by him recently changing his theme.

      A lot of people say that you don't lose rankings when you change your theme, but one of my sites disappeared from Google for over 3 weeks when I changed mine.

      I'll still be watching the situation to see if the negative SEO ends up working. I really enjoyed reading the thread about it! I think that Google will probably fix the situation with his website, especially if he's friends with Matt Cutts.
  • I say we all get together and spam the **** out of Matt Cutt's website with bad SEO and see how he likes it!
  • Banned
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  • Looking at justgoodcars.com that negativeseo mentions taking out, according to their backlink profile in majestic, they built in excess of 20 MILLION links between July 08 and March 09 - well before negativeseo said he/she started the campaign (he/she mentions starting "about a year ago"). The only way you can build that kind of volume of links is through automation, which leads to the conclusion that justgoodcars.com was ALREADY dealing in some pretty shady stuff to begin with....
    • [1] reply
    • Great find adaptise. This is one of the reasons I take people's claims with a huge grain of salt. Its easy to claim things and have people going oooh and ahh

  • Banned
    Lol, my gut tells me this is a publicity stunt to drive traffic to Dans site/s.

    Looks like it's working:

    Dan Thies negative SEO - Google Search

    Once again, drama delivers traffic. :rolleyes:
  • Google will fix this, I'll bet. it's always been possible to cause someone's site to "dance" for a while in Google and temporarily lose rankings by sending tons of spammy links; but it wasn't worth it because usually the site would come back quickly even stronger than before. Now it seems this new filter could result in a site being deindexed or stuck in the penalty for an extended period of time. I'll bet Panda 3.5 (when it comes out) will fix some of the problems. (God, I hope so) BTW, I know Dan Thies, and he is a very smart, stand up guy. He has taught myself and many thousands of others valuable Insights about SEO and IM.
    • [1] reply
    • Very much doubt it, since Panda has nothing to do with backlinks. It's a site quality filter (a machine learning algorithm).

      Sure, Google will try to fix things, but it isn't that easy (tweaking things). They can't just remove the penalties.
  • I wrote a good response that answers many questions but Mike Anthony cried like a baby and had the post remove. Please thank him for his efforts on making sure you are kept in the dark.

    Ok Mike Anthony thanks for the second warning email Is it a 3 strike rule?
  • I think continuous pressure needs to be applied to Google to reverse their moronic stance. Its not good for the internet, its not good for Google, and it's not good for anyone. It's akin to those witch hunts of the last century to go around penalizing sites for incoming links.
    • [1] reply
    • Regarding "holes in the negative seo theory", even if his theory could not be replicated exactly across many sites etc...

      I honestly believe that what NS posted is just one part of many devious processes that people use to hurt websites' rankings. I personally want Google to develop an algo that identifies quality content, gives proper credit where its due, and rewards quality content and user experience with great organic rankings and traffic, and want them to develop an algo that doesn't allow external factors out of webmaster's control to have such potentially drastic longterm affects and implications...because then we wouldn't be in this mess and people could without a doubt focus on providing the most quality content for users and rewarded accordingly. If Google was the Google that Google has been saying they are for the past decade, well lets just not go there lol...though they are certainly rushing around to get other reliable data signals for rankings, pushing AuthorRank, etc. BTW, the whole g plus author thing is a HUGE win for Google in terms of fighting SPAM, similar to Facebook comments, etc. THE PROBLEM IN MY OPINION IS THAT WE SEEM TO BE A FEW YEARS AWAY FROM THIS TYPE OF ALGO being "complete"...what do you guys think?

      Posts and discussions like the following just illustrate the type of storm we have brewing it seems...

      Google the following for an example: "[METHOD] Illuminati Link Domination Strategy", some of the traffic planet posts, etc

      AdWords advertisers can ofcourse use their account reps for "sway" in this regard as well, reporting sites they might find minor issues with etc this can be heavily abused certain ways...and is.

      301 redirects can be used to funnel "spammy" linkjuice and force subsequent link loss in all kinds of devious ways as well...building 1000's of links with one anchor text used on crappy properties you control, and then reporting the site and removing-deindexing those properties en masse will certainly not help people's websites. Do you believe stuff like this wouldn't hurt newer "average" websites in "average" niches? Do you believe stuff like these processes isn't happening more and more behind the scenes now that the different Google "triggers" seem extra sensitive in many regards?

      Many, many options out there for people that don't necessarily include just blasting crappy links, reporting their competitors for linkbuilding, etc...

      I dunno about you guys, but I'd love for Google to be the Google they claim they are, so I can get on with creating quality content that my demographics are asking for without even worrying about "SEO/links/negative seo/competitors using visible loopholes that have existed for some time even after being pointed out many times, etc". If you provide HUGE VALUE you want Google to address issues like these, no? Discussions on this negative seo topic provide more LONG-TERM value for the ENTIRE WEB COMMUNITY AT LARGE and RELEVANCE than 90% of discussions on here in my opinion. EDIT: For those that might misunderstand me on this point, I mean THIS STUFF NEEDS TO BE DEALT WITH, BUT THEY CONTINUE TO EITHER IGNORE OR JUST GENUINELY CAN'T STOP IT AT THIS CURRENT TIME I GUESS. In the mean time, the small-medium-sized guys are at risk IMO...which is the majority of the Internet.

      For example, discussing activities that occur in order to come up with a realistic solution does not equate to endorsing these activities. In my opinion, a certain political party here in the States has a huge issue with making this "logic leap" a lot of the time and they fight the same way many on this board do to harass others and "shut up about what is actually going on in the world" lol...
  • Also, can anyone update this thread with ANY related relevant legal cases (from any country) where companies have gone after individuals/companies for applying negative seo methods and the like, it would be VERY relevant?

    I was reading the Google thread on this issue and one guy mentioned some cases, but they didn't seem all that relevant to the stuff we are discussing here in terms of very specific negative seo methods. Some were going for criminal damages, etc. Since Google algo is proprietary info etc, how would cases like this actually translate across different continents?

    Just curious as I've seen people make suggestions that some of these types of activities are illegal in certain jurisdictions or could be found to be illegal for civil damages, and I wouldn't doubt it. But in terms of actually making a case that some guy tanked your website based on the interaction of factors no one OFFICIALLY knows aka the Google algo, probably living a continent over, used thousands of services and broke the TOS of thousands of sites during negative seo attempts, etc...I'd love to see some linked cases maybe I'm missing that are in process/appeal etc.

    I guess it would be all about proving "intent", and that's gotta be pretty difficult on a global scale regarding something so flimsy as SERPs and cross-continent laws, etc...

    Also I wanted to be a lawyer before getting into IM, so I like reading cases like these law cases lol.
  • I reckon for $20 you could by 5 Fiverrs and bring down a small site.
    • [2] replies
    • I'd imagine it's probably done for even less in a lot of cases.
    • If you can find 5 fiverrs for $20 then I'll print out this entire forum and eat the paper with no sauce
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  • I have this strange feeling that Dan Thies isn't very well liked....

    What's the deal?
    • [1] reply
    • I guess "white hat" seos/"black hat" seos are forever sworn enemies, or something like that maybe? Who knows, like those Spy vs spy cartoons I guess...

      I just don't want people coming in here throwing personal insults and derailing the discussion either. Hopefully we can keep the "personal" stuff out of this in that regard and keep discussing the reality of negative seo issues etc...
  • What do ya know, here's a quote from a post over on the TP forum for another example:

    "And again to keep whipping a dead horse because apparently some just arent listening...

    If you go setup 10-30 blogs, add your competitors links to the homepages, wait a few days for all of them to be crawled, then delete half the competitors links all at the same time, the 10-30 blogs will be deindexed in 3-6 weeks and your competitors sites will tank for their main keywords and in some cases it will not be possible for them to rank again for those keywords in the future.

    So yes SEO is not going away, but does the above kind of SEO sound like a fun place to be?"


    I agree with that poster about not wanting to operate in that sort of negative hostile environment, Google "TrafficPlanet Negative SEO Fiverr Gigs Now Available" for full thread.
  • Oh, here's another discussion going on on Google right now, very relevant to the discussion I'd think:

    https://plus.google.com/u/1/11129420...ts/UCUNUNMtFWk
  • Oh, here's another discussion going on on Google right now, very relevant to the discussion I'd think:

    https://plus.google.com/u/1/11129420...ts/UCUNUNMtFWk
  • How do you know Dan Thoes doesn't do blackhatseo himself?

    "He is seo guru"

    You can that only if you know all domain names he have or he work on.
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    Dan Thies and negative SEO

    It seems that Dan Thies is one more victim of negative SEO, as you can see it here: Google Groups . IMO, If google doesn't do something about crazy stuff that has been going on lately, I don't think they will last much longer.