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Is Google Giving People the Tools to Hurt Their Competitors SERPS?

by ednri871
8 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Google has always claimed in the past that their search rank algorithms will never be able to be manipulated in a negative way, meaning that your competitors will never be able to do anything to hurt your rankings.

It seems though, that this last Penquin update has gone against this long time Google policy. Basically they now tell us that poor back link quality can in fact hurt a site's ranking position. This begs the question of if it is possible to now link spam your competitors via blackhat methods, and cause them to drop in the rankings.

Any thoughts on this, and what it could mean for the future of possible serp wars?
#competitors #giving #google #hurt #people #serps #tools
  • Profile picture of the author dp40oz
    Yes it is definitely possible to hurt competitors with links. The more authority their sites have the harder it will be though. But nowhere has Google said that its impossible to manipulate other peoples rankings. They've said "there's almost nothing you can do" and now they've even changed that. Its extremely possible and they don't really care.
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  • Profile picture of the author radivoj
    Not really, it was already case study on another IM forum where guy using scrapebox and Xrumer during the one week period sent over 800K backlinks using only 1 kw as anchor text point to home page for one site which is ranked #1 on Google for some niche kw, site had PR 2 during the 4 weeks site hasn't drop the ranking at all, the PR of the site move from PR 2 to PR 3 site is still ranked #1 on Google...by the way Google currently working on that potential issue they said over a month ago, it should take place somewhere in July...

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    • Profile picture of the author cooler1
      Originally Posted by radivoj View Post

      Not really, it was already case study on another IM forum where guy using scrapebox and Xrumer during the one week period sent over 800K backlinks using only 1 kw as anchor text point to home page for one site which is ranked #1 on Google for some niche kw, site had PR 2 during the 4 weeks site hasn't drop the ranking at all, the PR of the site move from PR 2 to PR 3 site is still ranked #1 on Google...by the way Google currently working on that potential issue they said over a month ago, it should take place somewhere in July...
      What about the other case study (was it trafficplanet.net?) where someone did prove that negative SEO is possible? Plus all the Penguin case studies are talking about the importance of anchor text diversity and as you can't control your anchor text ratio, that is another potential negetive SEO issue.
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    • Profile picture of the author mrgee
      Originally Posted by radivoj View Post

      Not really, it was already case study on another IM forum where guy using scrapebox and Xrumer during the one week period sent over 800K backlinks using only 1 kw as anchor text point to home page for one site which is ranked #1 on Google for some niche kw, site had PR 2 during the 4 weeks site hasn't drop the ranking at all, the PR of the site move from PR 2 to PR 3 site is still ranked #1 on Google...by the way Google currently working on that potential issue they said over a month ago, it should take place somewhere in July...
      I may be wrong but I think this case study was performed pre-penguin..so Im not sure the findings are valid anymore.
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    • Profile picture of the author dp40oz
      Originally Posted by radivoj View Post

      Not really, it was already case study on another IM forum where guy using scrapebox and Xrumer during the one week period sent over 800K backlinks using only 1 kw as anchor text point to home page for one site which is ranked #1 on Google for some niche kw, site had PR 2 during the 4 weeks site hasn't drop the ranking at all, the PR of the site move from PR 2 to PR 3 site is still ranked #1 on Google...by the way Google currently working on that potential issue they said over a month ago, it should take place somewhere in July...
      Like I said high authority sites are much tougher. Thats why having quality high PR links bails you out of every Google algorithm. But try that on a 4 month old site ranking in a not so competitive niche and you'll probably see some damage. I'd also like to say that Xrumer/Scrapebox aren't the most effective way to penalize sites. Its when Google notices high amounts of powerful links coming in. Try pounding a bunch of ALN links at a 3 month old site and see how it fares post Penguin.
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      • Profile picture of the author dracoboar
        Originally Posted by dp40oz View Post

        Like I said high authority sites are much tougher. Thats why having quality high PR links bails you out of every Google algorithm. But try that on a 4 month old site ranking in a not so competitive niche and you'll probably see some damage. I'd also like to say that Xrumer/Scrapebox aren't the most effective way to penalize sites. Its when Google notices high amounts of powerful links coming in. Try pounding a bunch of ALN links at a 3 month old site and see how it fares post Penguin.

        Also to expand on this high authority HOME PAGES are going to be tough to attack but I rarely go against a home page. When the time comes i suspect it would be rather easy to take out a wikipedia page or something similar.
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  • Profile picture of the author radivoj
    No it wasn't on trafficplanet.net it was blackhatworld.com the guy who post this case study on the thread by the time he did removed a thread the reason he did post the screenshot of the actual site ranked #1 on Google to make sure that thread is Not fake I did run SEO majestic for particular domain and I find out that site has thousands and thousands of links contain same anchor the site is optimized for, most of the links are from spammy blog commenting pages, so I do believe that the person did sent about 800K links to the site using single anchor in order to drop the site ranking, I see site is still ranking #1 on Google....it's niche site that promote ClickBank product...
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  • Profile picture of the author dracoboar
    Originally Posted by ednri871 View Post

    Google has always claimed in the past that their search rank algorithms will never be able to be manipulated in a negative way, meaning that your competitors will never be able to do anything to hurt your rankings.

    It seems though, that this last Penquin update has gone against this long time Google policy. Basically they now tell us that poor back link quality can in fact hurt a site's ranking position. This begs the question of if it is possible to now link spam your competitors via blackhat methods, and cause them to drop in the rankings.

    Any thoughts on this, and what it could mean for the future of possible serp wars?
    Of course it is possible. Google doesnt know who placed all the links that over optimized the anchor-text of all the sites that were affected.

    Any argue,ent that negative seo cant happen needs to explain how google could smack thousands of sites for anchor-text over optimization but would somehow know which istes placed the links themselves and which were placed by 3rd parties.

    In short negative seo is the future until things change
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