
Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google - adzeds
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2272092/Google-Confirms-Negative-SEO-Exists
======
Matt_Cutts
Note: this article is over a year old. The article makes it sound as if this
is some new pronouncement, but it's really not. I've been using the language
mentioned in this article since 2010, at least:
[http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/calling-for-link-spam-
reports/...](http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/calling-for-link-spam-
reports/#comment-485916) where I said "we’ve said in the past that we work
very hard to prevent competitor A from hurting competitor B."

The change on the official guidelines comes from a tech writer noticing that I
normally say "we work hard to prevent this" and asking back in February 2012
if we should update the language on that page. I said yes and the language
changed in March 2012. It looks like this article is from April 2012.

One of the big reasons we say softer things (rather than "it's impossible")
regarding the idea of negative SEO is that we have seen people to pretty crazy
things to steal/hijack domain names in the past, like the bizarre history of
sex.com: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex.com>

People talk about negative SEO far more than people actually attempt it,
because you're never quite sure what effect (say) pointing some links to a
site might have--it might help the site instead of hurting it--plus it's
typically a better use of your time to develop your own site.

But if there's a site that is worried about negative SEO, the site can disavow
any links they want using our the disavow tool in Google's Webmaster Tools.
You can even sort to see the most recent links if you're worried that this is
something that just started.

The primary usage of the disavow tool is so that a site can disavow bad
linking that the site did itself and can't get removed from the web, but the
disavow tool also works fine to disavow links that you're worried might be
spammy.

~~~
lingben
Matt, no amount of hand-waving will convince people when there is ample
evidence of negative SEO, including meticulous case studies published online.

As well, the very fact that Google has given in and introduced the disavow
tool, it is incontrovertible proof that negative SEO is effective.

Google had a good run but you have not been able to keep up with those who
have striven day and night to beat your algos. The question is, can google
play catch up? and do so in time?

Several billions of dollars are riding on that question.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
We've looked into most of the blog posts about negative SEO, and in most cases
we've found major flaws or bad assumptions. Kind of like this guy was
convinced that authorship caused his traffic to go down by 90%:
[http://www.jitbit.com/news/183-how-google-authorship-
decreas...](http://www.jitbit.com/news/183-how-google-authorship-decreased-
our-traffic-by-90/) except that wasn't the case: [http://aberrant.me/no-
google-authorship-didnt-decrease-your-...](http://aberrant.me/no-google-
authorship-didnt-decrease-your-traffic-by-90/)

The disavow tool is not "incontrovertible proof" that negative SEO is
effective. We introduced the disavow tool for people who had trouble cleaning
up their own spammy/bad linkbuilding and weren't able to get every bad link
removed from the web before doing reconsideration requests. Please go back to
read our original announcement at
[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-new-
too...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-new-tool-to-
disavow-links.html) to confirm that was the primary purpose.

By the way lingben, I just took one of the most passed-around examples where
someone claimed that negative SEO worked and debunked that blog post here:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5815658>

~~~
TomAnthony
Matt - thanks for jumping in the comments.

Can you confirm that the disavow tool is automatic? Or do people need to file
a reconsideration request? Is the answer different depending on whether there
is a manual penalty or an algorithmic decrease in rank/trust?

I ask because you recommended it for people who are concerned about potential
negative SEO, and I'm want to be clear on how that works. I think there is
certainly a perception that a reconsideration request is some sort of
admission of guilt, and I can imagine people being reticent to file one if
they weren't responsible for the links in question.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
The disavow tool is automatic for any algorithmic rankings (such as Penguin
and Panda).

If you have a manual webspam action, then you should get a notice after you
verify your site at google.com/webmasters . In the case of a manual webspam
action, our advice is try to get any spammy links that you put on the web
taken down. If there are some spammy links that you can't get taken down off
the web, you can use the disavow tool for those remaining links and then do a
reconsideration request.

~~~
davak
Matt -

I've never received a notice of bad or spammy links. Am I correct in assuming
that there would be no gain in gambling with the disavow tool?

------
DanielBMarkham
The amazing thing is that this is news.

Of course competitors can trash your organic rankings -- and it's a lot easier
for them to trash you than it is to promote themselves.

I'm glad Google is slowly coming around to admitting that this house of
mirrors has some flaws. The more information publishers get about this, the
better choices we can make in content selection.

~~~
btilly
What is news here is not that negative SEO exists. It is that Google has been
forced to admit that it is a real issue.

 _Edit:_ After reading the comments at the end of the story, magicalist is
right. The story is wrong, Google made this change a lot longer than a week
ago, it isn't actually news.

~~~
magicalist
...10 years ago.

~~~
btilly
No, last week. So it really is news.

That's when their help page went from saying, _"There's almost nothing a
competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our
index."_ to _"Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to
harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index."_

In other words from saying, "Don't worry about it" to "We're on it".

~~~
magicalist
No, go read the comments. The first change was made 10 years ago; the change
you're referring to apparently happened sometime between March and April
2012[1].

Moreover, there's absolutely no information about _how_ you could penalize
someone's site. The article's speculation is exactly that.

Honestly, if it were as easy as buying a bunch of spam links to a site for $20
and get them penalized or delisted, there would have already been a host of
exposés showing exactly that. There are a _lot_ of motivated SEOs out there,
chomping at the bit to show that their personal Google conspiracy theory is
correct.

[1] [http://www.seroundtable.com/google-can-competitors-harm-
me-1...](http://www.seroundtable.com/google-can-competitors-harm-
me-15210.html)

~~~
arbuge
Somebody posted a link to a detailed expose' on HN a few weeks ago detailing a
successful negative SEO campaign to destroy a competing car dealer's rankings.
I'll see if I can dig it up, but this kind of stuff is definitely going on -
and people are specifically being paid to do it.

~~~
dbarlett
I think it was [http://trafficplanet.com/topic/2372-successful-negative-
seo-...](http://trafficplanet.com/topic/2372-successful-negative-seo-case-
study/) (Comment by trevin <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5701104>)

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Since I've got some free time between meetings, I'll go ahead and debunk this
one. [http://trafficplanet.com/topic/2372-successful-negative-
seo-...](http://trafficplanet.com/topic/2372-successful-negative-seo-case-
study/) is a claim from April 18, 2012 that claimed that negative SEO worked
on justgoodcars.com.

Here's the problem with that: the site they selected was spamming, and Google
had already taken action on that site. The site had been spamming for years;
see e.g.
[http://growabrain.typepad.com/growabrain/2007/10/fiat-126.ht...](http://growabrain.typepad.com/growabrain/2007/10/fiat-126.html)
for a spam comment pointing to justgoodcars.com from January of 2008. Here's
another spam link from April 2008: [http://www.punny.org/money/ditch-your-
ancient-car-and-get-30...](http://www.punny.org/money/ditch-your-ancient-car-
and-get-3000-towards-a-new-one/#comment-171959) . Or check out this low-
quality directory link from years ago:
<http://www.easyweblistonline.com/News___Media/Automotive/> Or this low-
quality directory: <http://www.whatclicks.com/shopping/automotive.html>

Google found a bunch of spammy links like this dating back years and years,
and we took manual webspam action regarding this site _before_ this so-called
"detailed expose" of negative SEO ever came out.

Like many of the reports of "successful negative SEO" that we've investigated,
the claims didn't hold up. In this case, we had already caught the site in
question for spammy links going back years and years--long before the negative
SEO campaign started.

~~~
arbuge
Interesting back story to that one. Thanks for sharing those details.

------
shawnz
It's not Google's job to make sure every webmaster has a "fair shot" at
rankings. It's their job to make sure the best results appear when I search
for something. In Google's eyes, having false negatives is worth not having
false positives, and that's just the reality of the web.

Besides, it seems to me that these "problems" are only really thought of as
problems by the type of people who put "search engine" in the title of their
blog.

~~~
austenallred
Nonsense; that is Google's one and only job.

My parents run a small e-commerce business that has supported them for years;
a team of a dozen people run everything from the little website to the
shipping. All of their sales come from (mostly accidental) SEO and Amazon.

The scary reality is that right now that entire operation could be destroyed
by a competitor in a couple minutes if they knew how. It's not hard to find a
package on Fiverr that includes 1,000 spammy links for $5, so a competitor
could easily direct 5,000 spammy links (more than the entire amount of links
directed at them right now) for $50.

Is that use case emotionally loaded? Sure. But it isn't extreme. I recognize
that the company only exists because Google gave it a chance to, but the idea
that the livelihoods of a dozen people could vanish if someone got a little
bit ambitious deserves a better response than what Google has given it.

Google's current options for removing negative SEO are very hand-wavy, mostly
because they don't really believe negative SEO is a large issue. Admittedly,
potential for negative SEO is a cop-out black-hatters use to cover their
tracks more than it is a real threat, but that doesn't mean Google can ignore
it.

Google's current solutions for combating negative SEO: "Ask webmasters to
remove the links" - a complete joke and everyone knows it, and the Link
Disavow Tool, which is pretty difficult to use, and Google admits that it may
be several months before the rankings are updated after links are disavowed.

~~~
shawnz
> Nonsense; that is Google's one and only job.

Why? You're not paying them to list your website. Meanwhile I _am_ paying
them, in ad impressions, to look at your listing. If you want reliable
returns, buy an ad instead.

EDIT: What I am trying to say is, it doesn't matter to me if I see "Jack's
Pastries" or "Jill's Pastries" in my search results. Your livelihood is not
Google's responsibility, unless you buy ad space from them.

~~~
austenallred
Their job is to show the best results for a given search query. If my website
is the best but it doesn't appear at the top because a competitor has attacked
it, Google isn't doing its job.

~~~
apalmer
I completely get you from a human level.

From a business level google's job is to sell ads, it sell ads by providing
valuable search results 'for free', and one part of the intrinsic quality of
the search results is that they are 'good' in the sense that you describe.

Aside from that google really doesnt owe anyone anything, if tomorrow google
found that showing small businesses search results negatively affected their
bottom line, your mom and pop ecommerce site and all like it would disappear
(until searchers moved on to another service). Google's 'fairness' only exists
and should be counted on as long as game theortic/min max optimization of
bottom line happens to align googles interests with your own...

~~~
austenallred
I'm speaking from a user level. If I'm a user and Google isn't showing me the
best results, it's not doing its job for its users. If Google doesn't have
users, its ad space isn't worth anything, and its business model ceases to
exist.

Google is the epitome of a consumer web business model. They sell users. So
yes, they have to have buyers, but their _most important_ job is to have users
to sell.

~~~
rdtsc
You are not Google's customer though. You are product sold to their customers.
Your buying power, add viewing abilities, knowledge of your age, hobbies and
other stats is what makes Google money by proving their add buying customers
with quality "product".

> If Google doesn't have users, its ad space isn't worth anything, and its
> business model ceases to exist.

Yes but that is a second order effect. Basically the majority of "products"
have to be convinced that Google is not good enough _and_ there is another
alternative (I like DuckDuckGo for example), then as you say, people will stop
using Google Search. Then if Gmail goes South, people stop using that. Then
Android goes South, they start using iPhones. Eventually Google will provide a
lower quality "product" to their customers and Google's stock will take a hit.
However, don't be fooled into thinking you are Google's primary customer
because you use them for search.

------
pfortuny
"It is impossible".

"It is quite difficult".

"We work hard to prevent it".

It is exactly the same as behaviour security companies had in the past until
they learned that, to quote Adidas, 'impossible is nothing' and that 'quite
difficult' is nonsense due to automation.

It used to be quite difficult to stage a DOS (anyone remembers the first one
Yahoo! suffered in 2000?, ah, those were the days when we were surprised by
them...). Nowadays a bunch of kiddies can put amazon down on its knees.

Well, probably not amazon.

~~~
benbeltran
"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" - (attributed
to John Maynard Kaynes)

The algorithm has changed. The web has changed. Naturally, google has changed.

~~~
pfortuny
It is not a problem of a change in reality. It is a problem of wrong
statements:

'It is impossible' is certainly false on the internet for almost anything you
can think.

'It is very difficult': See the sysjail fiasco [1]. Once something is deemed
possible, it is not very difficult, on computer systems.

So, it is not the facts that have changed, it is their perception by Google.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysjail>

~~~
benbeltran
Or, the ranking algorithm was previously designed for this not to have an
impact, and as real-world usage showed abuse, they changed it. Repeat this
cycle until now. So the techniques to game the algorithm changed, hence the
algorithm changed, hence the stance changed... Constantly, we don't live in a
static web.

(EDIT: Also of note is the fact that this change was from a year ago, and the
previous one was in 2003 ... So. Yeah)

------
arbuge
The PageRank algorithm seems broken to me. If spam links count for negative
value you get competitors doing negative seo by buying cheap bad links to
competing websites in bulk via places like fiverr. If they count for zero
value then you get webmasters trying their luck by buying the same stuff
themselves - who knows, there could be a good link amongst all the bad stuff
and no harm in trying...

Something other than ranking by inbound links seems to be needed at this
point.

~~~
larrys
"The PageRank algorithm seems broken to me."

Imagine thinking that the "honor system" would actually not be gamed!

Pagerank was designed a long time ago and suffers from a way of thinking that
academics such as Page and Brin have.

The same thing happened with email once the cat got out of the bag on that. Or
on craigslist.org - Bottom line is not anticipating what would happen when
widespread use of a product occurs and the user base changes significantly.

~~~
tomjen3
Well the cure is pretty simple. You can apply pagerank in to calculate the
reputation of each site and then multiply that number with the value of the
outgoing link, using normal page rank.

How do you get the reputation information? Well you need a network of
creators, people, so that you can capture the social interactions between
them.

~~~
ethnomusicolog
are you suggesting that facebook could seize the search jewel from google? It
is a genuine question.

~~~
tomjen3
No, I was more attempting to hint at a possible use for G+.

------
carl689
The article has some user comments I found relevant I don't see pointed out
here.

"That change was actually made a year ago. The only change on that page is the
positioning of the video. The actual text has not changed in over a
year."-Barry Schwartz

AND

"The article is also incredibly wrong about the previous change. Google did't
add the "almost" last year (2012) but TEN years ago, in 2003, as you can see
with Archive.org:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20030915000000*/http://www.google...](http://web.archive.org/web/20030915000000*/http://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html)
-LowLevel

------
ckluis
Matt if you read hackernews. This is bullshit. Spam links should count for 0
value not negative value.

~~~
pinko
How about just asking, "Hey Matt, can you say something about why you decided
spam links should count for negative value instead of 0?"

I've never met him, but as demonstrated by his long HN profile, Matt is
clearly a nice guy. He's also smart, so he probably thought this exact case
through. None of us outside Google really know how this works.

None of that means his group didn't make a poor decision in this case, but
let's see if we can talk like adults and can learn more before going all "OMFG
this is bllsht" on him...

~~~
larrys
"Matt is clearly a nice guy."

In a sense he plays the role of a politician. Not able to do much (he is only
one google guy after all) and trying to keep the masses feeling that he is
acting in their best interest. He can't really be blamed. The bottom line is
that none of this has any impact on google anyway.

If anything it simply pushes more people to want to pay for paid placement.

------
leephillips
Somehow it seems unfair for Google to suggest that people spend time with the
disavowal tool to correct deficiencies in Google's algorithms.

~~~
arbuge
Especially when a competitor could buy 1000s of these links for $20 on a place
like fiverr. Are we supposed to spend the rest of our lives disavowing this
stuff?

Edit: the 1000s figure is not an exaggeration. Go to fiverr and search on
"back link" to see.

~~~
ramayac
Really?, wow... I had no idea about that. I bought some followers for a client
once, but "1000's of links" for $20 sounds surreal (at least for me!)

~~~
hellweaver666
it's mostly automated comment spam, forum spam and the like.

~~~
johnjlocke
75% of those links won't even be valid, so you really do get what you pay for
on Fiverrrrrrrrr.

------
kbojody
Currently the linked Article redirects to a removed page.

<http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2272092/Page-Removed>

Here is a cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2272092/Google-
Confirms-Negative-SEO-Exists)

------
slig
In the Google Webmaster's tools it's possible to download a list of all the
new links that are linking to your site.

Using this tool I've been able to discover that someone has started to buy
spammy links in wordpress comments linking to my website. Those wordpress
blogs are full of spam, so I want to believe that Google is already ignoring
everything there.

------
ScottWhigham
Somewhat of a sidebar, but what's to prevent the following:

1) You buy 1000 links for $5 [1]

2) You enjoy a brief rise in the rankings

3) Google catches on and penalizes you

4) You use the link disavow tool to effectively say, "We didn't do it! A
competitor did it to us!"

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5813496>

~~~
davedx
Why would you enjoy a brief rise in the rankings from something that causes
'negative SEO'? Surely these inbound links either harm or help you, not both?

~~~
ceejayoz
Inbound links don't immediately get detected as negative. That takes a while.

------
btilly
Weird evil conspiracy idea.

The more people use negative SEO and their victims use Google's tools to
disavow it, the worse Bing's results get.

------
skyraider
Does anyone know if it's always the case that you can find spammy links to
your site by using Google (e.g. link:mysite.com)? My link count in webmaster
tools is an order of magnitude higher than the inbound links that I can find
by using the search engine.

~~~
trevin
Google's WT index seems to provide a fair amount of the links. There are a few
3rd party tools that do a really good job of indexing nearly all of the
backlinks to your site:

<http://www.opensiteexplorer.org> <http://www.ahrefs.com>
<http://www.majesticseo.com>

~~~
skyraider
Thanks, opensiteexplorer displays about 75x more links that GWT does. Great
stuff.

------
dbla
Why does google need to penalize sites for spammy inbound links? Couldn't they
instead just make those links not contribute at all (not penalize the ranking
but not boost it at all either)? I'm sure it's more complicated than this, but
I'm curious.

~~~
rubinelli
Simply ignoring spammy links doesn't reduce link spam, because people still
have an incentive to keep spamming in the off chance that some of those links
will be considered valid.

------
damon_c
It would be interesting if Google let us optionally search using the original
pure pagerank search from 10 years ago.

Would it be like turning off spam filtering on email?

------
trevin
The most frustrating part of negative SEO or any link cleanup is that Google
doesn't tell which links they think are spammy links. If you are working
for/with a site that has been online for a while, they will have thousands of
crappy looking links pointing to their site.

Scraper sites pick up content from other websites all the time and cross post
with porn and other crap. Directory submissions that were perfectly fine 5 or
10 years ago can now be viewed as "low quality" by Google. Blogs that used to
be well-maintained have been bought by spammers and SEOs and are now content
farms.

Google's lack of transparency when it comes to links is very troublesome. I
understand they can't give out the ins and outs of their algo, but asking your
average website owner to go through 10k+ backlinks and identify and _remove_
the links is a pretty tall task when there isn't a clear standard on what is
bad and what isn't.

------
ekanes
One way Google could mitigate this would be if webmasters could tell Google
about new/expected links. Obviously some links are unexpected (great!) but if
Google new you weren't trying to add 50 links, and 50 links showed up, perhaps
they could take that into account.

------
jrochkind1
"This page has been removed due to inaccuracies. We regret the error."

hmm?

------
mikescoffield
This seems like an open invite for people to create blatant spam content.

------
hippich
I believe true way of dealing with spam links for Google would be ignore
these. It will solve several problems at once: prevent spammed websites
getting into index, prevent legitimate websites getting banned because of
negative seo, make "seo specialist" job become a joke, and people eventually
give up paying for it.

Google on the other hand tries to punish, i.e. to scare away potential gamers,
instead of ignoring these. I believe this is wrong and inefficient approach.

------
at-fates-hands
I think the more scary thing here is it's incredibly easy and dirt cheap to
completely bury your competitors with bad SEO.

Think of a multi-million dollar company wanting to dispose of smaller
competitors. For even a modest outlay of say $1000, you could do incredible,
long-term damage to other companies web sites.

Also, I'm pretty sure Google has no plans to update their algorithm to account
for this huge flaw either, making every company vulnerable to attack from
anybody.

------
jonknee
Negative SEO and negative click fraud (a competitor clicking on my AdSense ads
fraudulently) are the two biggest things that keep me up at night. It's
terrifying knowing that something so simple can take me out overnight and
there's nothing I can do to prevent it.

I'm surprised this hasn't become more like DDOS where thugs blackmail
webmasters into submission with the threat of taking them offline. Or maybe it
has and I just haven't heard...

------
programminggeek
Here is probably the best thing I can sy about dealing with SEO... you should
care a little, but you should really stop caring a lot.

What I mean is, you should totally care about SEO, and doing basic, simple
things like targeting long tail traffic, some simple content
syndication/distribution/guest posting, but mostly I've seen that the best
results are the outcome of an ongoing process, not the fad of the day.

Creating content, being smart about it, but ignoring the day to day ebbs and
flows of the SEO world will make you a much happier person because in most
cases, your competition isn't doing anything at all, so putting any effort in
at all is almost a win by default.

------
adorable
How can Google detect if a spammy link has been created by the site's owner or
by a competitor?

I don't see any way to detect that - apart from asking webmasters to report
spammy backlinks. But that really isn't sustainable.

------
eddywebs
The article is inaccurate read between the lines of the comments.

------
dragonwriter
Seems to me the general solution to negative SEO is instead of an unknown-
quality-link bonus and a bad-link penalty, unknown-quality links should have
_no_ value and _good_ links should have positive value.

The problem is it is probably harder to split the world into probably-good vs.
unknown links rather than probably-bad vs. unknown links.

------
macspoofing
Is it me, or has HN been invaded by SEO consultants (case in point: OP).
There's quite a bit more SEO-related topics these days. It seems to have
started a few months ago, and it's getting worse.

------
csomar
Wait a second, why doesn't Google just count the link juice of these links are
0 (null).

This doesn't benefit the spammer, and it doesn't kill the innocent. Am I
missing something here?

------
adventured
The solution here is dead simple.

Shitty links should have no SEO value, rather than a negative value.

That eliminates the problem of people using bad links to hurt their
competition.

~~~
JangoSteve
But it also means there's nothing to lose and everything to gain by buying
links for your own domain. Which would probably make the practice much more
widespread.

~~~
dragonwriter
> But it also means there's nothing to lose and everything to gain by buying
> links for your own domain.

Well, nothing to lose except money: to discourage this, you just have to have
links-of-unknown-quality produce _no_ benefit, and links-with-positive-quality
provide positive value; this is better than links of unknown value providing
positive value and links with negative quality providing negative value.

------
scottgerri
Nowadays, Social bookmarking and Directory submission are important and great
way to get traffic and all source..

------
rainhacker
"This page has been removed due to inaccuracies. We regret the error."

------
kushti
Hey, Google, what's about "Don't be evil" populism ?

------
ywang0414
Any system can be cheated. Nothing here.

