Is Negative SEO really possible?

by 25 replies
29
Hello guys,

I have a website that was ranking good in the search engines, it was ranking high on Google and Bing post-penguin but just two weeks ago my site dropped from rankings. Nothing unusual was done but i was informed by a friend that it might have been hit by Negative SEO. Is this really possible? how do they do it? If so how do i prevent or save my site?

Thanks
#search engine optimization #negative #seo
  • Yes very possible I'm afraid, and nothing you can do to stop it. But chances are your site wasn't affected by someone doing that.
  • It is possible but I seriously doubt its why your site tanked. Sites tank all the time for tons of reasons, none of which are related to negative SEO.
  • Absolutely possible. But I'm starting to notice that a lot of people are blaming negative SEO when their site drops. It's not nearly as common as some would think.
    • [1] reply
    • Hi Lakbay,

      Negative SEO is a form of sabotage, and yes it is possible for someone to sabotage your rankings, though it generally involves high risk, and/or illegal activity. So, of all of the suspected Negative SEO incidents, I would estimate that more than 99.99% have absolutely nothing to do with negative SEO. It is mostly just FUD.

      It is difficult to give you any kind of informed advice, without knowing more than the fact that your rankings dropped. So I will give you the most common reason for a drop in rankings based on the little bit of info you shared.

      Your pages were likely ranking higher than they actually deserved, due to the temporary effects of QDF (freshness factor). Since QDF is temporary, you will naturally see your rankings drop when the boost from QDF wears off. Your website has not been singled out for a penalty, it is just going through the natural ranking fluctuations that all web pages experience.
  • You must to read and follow the Google rules for recovering your site at Google.
  • Domain age is important? Negative SEO is not or nearly impossible against Aged domains.
    • [1] reply
    • That too. Aged / trusted domains tend to be able to handle a sudden surge of backlinks without much trouble.
  • It doesn't seem that you can be able to harm another site but I see evidence that it is actually possible.

    I just saw where bing has come up with a system for webmasters to cancel the power any link gives a site good or bad.
  • This is possible if Google detects unnatural link velocity. If your links do not grow consistently from unique IPs, your rank can drop. I've noticed this more so after Penguin.
  • You can make sure that by do a bit analysis on your backlinks.

    There are various backlinks tools, you can use them to do some analysis and if you can spot out the backlinks which are against Google guidelines and If you are sure that you did NOT place such link, I think you as the site owner to remove the link OR you can report to Google about this. But do NOT tell Google that you are doing SEO yourself.....
  • It is possible, but I wouldn't think that it is that likely. It takes a lot of time and energy for someone to do such a thing.

    I would not focus on that, but in getting my site back ranking by creating new content, and building a variety of high quality backlinks.
  • Yes it is possible to do negative seo. I think you website had a lot of apmmy links and google penalize your site after penguin update.
  • Yes it is possible, and yes it is happening. And apparently it can't be tracked as long as you use very shady link builders, which is what you want anyway, because they're cheap. No ethics left in this world, and no way to protect yourself. Thanks, Google!!
  • I've often wondered how much negative seo I would need to do to take google down.

    Not sure there is enough porn sites on the internet for that one. Worst case scenario maybe dumping a few billion into spammy fiver gigs could work.

    LETS TAKE BIG G DOWN! I really do wonder if all warriors branched together, whether it would be possible to even put a dent in google. Likely not. But if I got to do it all by myself I will still try. =]

    -Red
  • It'd be impossible to put a dent in the results. Even if ever single Warrior went on a negative SEO run.
  • yh possible on off page optimization like building links from banned and spam sites. but can find easily by checking Bls using third party tool like backlinkwatch
    • [1] reply
    • It is absolutely possible to take down a site with negative SEO, but it takes tons of work to take down an authority site. Without seeing your site, it would be impossible to know for sure how easy it would be to take down your site.

      It would be hard to prove negative SEO too unless you have been tracking the links to your site on a regular basis.

      I recommend that you start building more links to your site to increase the ratio of good links to bad links to your site.
  • If you do negative SEO then you will be penalised by the google....
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
  • Unfortunately, nowadays after the end of April, it is very much a possibility. Google now actively punishes for certain types of links/link patterns, rather than simply discounting them as it did before. Its aim was to discourage such linking but instead it has opened up a huge can of worms as people are now blasting other people's sites into oblivion, rather than doing positive SEO on their own sites. It's all quite chaotic in some niches at the moment.
  • HERE IS A VERY DISTURBING THREAD DETAILING NEGATIVE SEO IN PRACTICE
  • Its possible but not so easy if your site is perfect with onsite SEO.
  • I should add that large authority/established sites are not susceptible to being taken down, in general. But on smaller sites, it's possible for sure.
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
  • [DELETED]
  • Banned
    As others said negative seo is definitely possible which can impact your site badly. But after the penguin update, check for your site structure and try to find out what are the wrong or missing on page factors in your site structure as penguin is about the accuracy of the site. So check this also and manage it to get the more better results and ranking for your site.
  • Certainly very possible. Maybe you need to read and understand more about Best practices to help Google find, crawl, and index your site

    Maybe there are some mistakes that you did in the past, and recently recognized by Google, or perhaps deliberately negative techniques done by your competitors to your site with a bad purpose.
    You can start from one side to the other, to know exactly where the mistakes occurred that caused your site get hit by penguin, and as soon as possible to take corrective measures (although as soon as any corrective measures, does not guarantee the results will be seen rapidly)
    • [1] reply
    • Well, I won't deny it completely but as there are plenty of factors that does matter it is not likely that one could actually know about its existence. You could also give a thought to if it was the Penguin update that did the damage for you, the only way out of this is lay more emphasis on the quality links and if you do find any negative links just try to remove it or make the required arrangements otherwise just keep the quality content flowing.
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    Is Negative SEO really possible?

    Hello guys, I have a website that was ranking good in the search engines, it was ranking high on Google and Bing post-penguin but just two weeks ago my site dropped from rankings. Nothing unusual was done but i was informed by a friend that it might have been hit by Negative SEO. Is this really possible? how do they do it? If so how do i prevent or save my site?