5 ms·

Wow, I had no idea that you could pay someone to put in bogus links to a competitor in order to cause Google to penalize their page ranking. That's pretty shady

Wow, I had no idea that you could pay someone to put in bogus links to a competitor in order to cause Google to penalize their page ranking. That's pretty shady but is it a "all is fair in love and war" type thing or is someone going to do something about this? I can totally see an organization pressuring people for pay-offs to "protect" them from certain sites. Is this already happening?

Rudism 14y ago
It's called "negative seo" and it does appear to be an effective way to blast people out of Google's top results. Here's a comment I found from someone else who's experienced this: http://www.seobook.com/negative-seo-outing#45906 http://www.seobook.com/negative-seo-outing#45906
- nhebb 14y ago
  For more on the subject, SEOmoz did a Whiteboard Friday on negative SEO a few weeks ago: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/negative-seo-myths-realities-and-precautions-whiteboard-friday http://www.seomoz.org/blog/negative-seo-myths-realities-and-...
  - joshcrews 14y ago
    I'm reading the transcript of the video and he talks about a form of attack where fake emails are sent from spoofy addresses demanding positive review takedowns and making legal threats. I wonder if that's a possible explanation of the life shield email he got. In the seomoz article find "It's even more terrifying, but they sent fake emails" to get to the relevant part.
Jem 14y ago
Google has always denied that this is possible. The recent coverage on negative SEO seems to show otherwise.
- iamben 14y ago
  Indeed. AFAIK, Google made some subtle changes to their guidelines that say otherwise - link: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/negative-seo/ http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/negative-seo/
franze 14y ago
years ago in the poker business this happened quite often. smaller players (in the poker vertical) tried to kick out bigger players this way. we saw it, we were worried, then google took care of the "poker" vertical overall (the big "poker" shake up of 2009). i would personally just report it to google. if i would not get a response via the "reconsideration request" i would fly to one of the SEO conferences and talk with one of the google spam guys there. would be a much better option than sending idiotic threatening letters to random websites.
sasha-dv 14y ago
Although Matt Cutts claims that this is an algorithm change and does not involve any human review of individual websites - this is not true. They went after specific guys who sold links on their splog farms, but those who didn't are up and running. A lot of people who hired "SEO experts" were burned just because the expertise of those "experts" was buying links on said splog farms. The thing is that google's algorithm looks like this (http://imgur.com/XxhZg http://imgur.com/XxhZg) and the real "SEO experts", the black hat guys, run circles around it. If you doubt that just look at the results of your search queries. See any spam? I've built a blog in 2005 which I basically abandoned in 2007. That blog was scraped and its content republished by a few BH guys who didn't bothered to remove links pointing to my original blog which resulted that today my blog has over 75% of its links coming from the splog farms. I'm not talking about a few links here and there. I have over 40000 of those and yet I have no warnings in GWMT and the blog ranks #1 for its main keyword. If you're running an online business avoid hiring "SEO experts", they are not just useless they are dangerous. So, how can you get hurt by some asshole? First, he can buy links on the splog farms already penalized by google. Second, he can create extremely transparent splog farm and link to your site. (by transparent I mean autogen content, no keyword variations in anchor text, trackback spam, ...) Third, he can just "xrumer blast" you out of google index. I believe that the approach google took recently will get a lot of small business (and webmasters) hurt, but it will have almost no effect on black hatters. Why? Because, with all being said and done, the only thing that really counts in SEO is the number of links and the BH guys are masters at creating those. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb) Google screwed it up big time by making negative SEO possible, but I doubt they'll change their approach. I doubt that they even care about it.
- derleth 14y ago
  > look at the results of your search queries. See any spam? Not in my queries, no.
  - silverbax88 14y ago
    I'll bet you don't even realize it's spam. Do a search for something like 'water heater reviews' and several of those links on the front page will ultimately send you to an affiliate site or zip submit. Spam.
JackC 14y ago
That's pretty shady but is it a "all is fair in love and war" type thing or is someone going to do something about this? I would bet this is some kind of business tort -- unfair competition, interference with potential business relationships, commercial disparagement, something along those lines. I don't have any particular knowledge in this area, but intuitively, it's too shady to be legal -- it's like taking out embarrassing ads in your competitor's name or something. Not a normal part of business competition. (A good rule of thumb -- if it were legal, would people be doing it?) Maybe you could even get to trademark infringement, if you argued that the bogus links are a false claim that the company itself is doing something it isn't doing -- like if I distributed swastikas with my competitor's logo and phone number on them, I can imagine that being some kind of trademark tort. That doesn't mean you can prove it. It would be interesting trying to dig up the evidence, especially if the blackhat intermediaries are in an awkward jurisdiction, and then prove how much impact it had on your business. But I bet it could be done. (Like others, I'm skeptical that that's really what happened in this particular case. But who knows ...) As a reminder, I am not your lawyer or your mother. Take those elbows off the table, young man.

Rudism 14y ago

It's called "negative seo" and it does appear to be an effective way to blast people out of Google's top results. Here's a comment I found from someone else who's experienced this: http://www.seobook.com/negative-seo-outing#45906 http://www.seobook.com/negative-seo-outing#45906

nhebb 14y ago
For more on the subject, SEOmoz did a Whiteboard Friday on negative SEO a few weeks ago: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/negative-seo-myths-realities-and-precautions-whiteboard-friday http://www.seomoz.org/blog/negative-seo-myths-realities-and-...
- joshcrews 14y ago
  I'm reading the transcript of the video and he talks about a form of attack where fake emails are sent from spoofy addresses demanding positive review takedowns and making legal threats. I wonder if that's a possible explanation of the life shield email he got. In the seomoz article find "It's even more terrifying, but they sent fake emails" to get to the relevant part.

Jem 14y ago

Google has always denied that this is possible. The recent coverage on negative SEO seems to show otherwise.

iamben 14y ago
Indeed. AFAIK, Google made some subtle changes to their guidelines that say otherwise - link: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/negative-seo/ http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/negative-seo/

franze 14y ago

years ago in the poker business this happened quite often. smaller players (in the poker vertical) tried to kick out bigger players this way. we saw it, we were worried, then google took care of the "poker" vertical overall (the big "poker" shake up of 2009). i would personally just report it to google. if i would not get a response via the "reconsideration request" i would fly to one of the SEO conferences and talk with one of the google spam guys there. would be a much better option than sending idiotic threatening letters to random websites.

sasha-dv 14y ago

Although Matt Cutts claims that this is an algorithm change and does not involve any human review of individual websites - this is not true. They went after specific guys who sold links on their splog farms, but those who didn't are up and running. A lot of people who hired "SEO experts" were burned just because the expertise of those "experts" was buying links on said splog farms. The thing is that google's algorithm looks like this (http://imgur.com/XxhZg http://imgur.com/XxhZg) and the real "SEO experts", the black hat guys, run circles around it. If you doubt that just look at the results of your search queries. See any spam? I've built a blog in 2005 which I basically abandoned in 2007. That blog was scraped and its content republished by a few BH guys who didn't bothered to remove links pointing to my original blog which resulted that today my blog has over 75% of its links coming from the splog farms. I'm not talking about a few links here and there. I have over 40000 of those and yet I have no warnings in GWMT and the blog ranks #1 for its main keyword. If you're running an online business avoid hiring "SEO experts", they are not just useless they are dangerous. So, how can you get hurt by some asshole? First, he can buy links on the splog farms already penalized by google. Second, he can create extremely transparent splog farm and link to your site. (by transparent I mean autogen content, no keyword variations in anchor text, trackback spam, ...) Third, he can just "xrumer blast" you out of google index. I believe that the approach google took recently will get a lot of small business (and webmasters) hurt, but it will have almost no effect on black hatters. Why? Because, with all being said and done, the only thing that really counts in SEO is the number of links and the BH guys are masters at creating those. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb) Google screwed it up big time by making negative SEO possible, but I doubt they'll change their approach. I doubt that they even care about it.

derleth 14y ago
> look at the results of your search queries. See any spam? Not in my queries, no.
- silverbax88 14y ago
  I'll bet you don't even realize it's spam. Do a search for something like 'water heater reviews' and several of those links on the front page will ultimately send you to an affiliate site or zip submit. Spam.

JackC 14y ago

That's pretty shady but is it a "all is fair in love and war" type thing or is someone going to do something about this? I would bet this is some kind of business tort -- unfair competition, interference with potential business relationships, commercial disparagement, something along those lines. I don't have any particular knowledge in this area, but intuitively, it's too shady to be legal -- it's like taking out embarrassing ads in your competitor's name or something. Not a normal part of business competition. (A good rule of thumb -- if it were legal, would people be doing it?) Maybe you could even get to trademark infringement, if you argued that the bogus links are a false claim that the company itself is doing something it isn't doing -- like if I distributed swastikas with my competitor's logo and phone number on them, I can imagine that being some kind of trademark tort. That doesn't mean you can prove it. It would be interesting trying to dig up the evidence, especially if the blackhat intermediaries are in an awkward jurisdiction, and then prove how much impact it had on your business. But I bet it could be done. (Like others, I'm skeptical that that's really what happened in this particular case. But who knows ...) As a reminder, I am not your lawyer or your mother. Take those elbows off the table, young man.