Negative SEO - How to Tank a Site in Google 101

[JD_Toims]

I decided to start a new thread for this one, which is an answer to a question posted in this thread [webmasterworld.com...] because I think it's good for people to know both sides of SEO for Google, and unfortunately, they've opened up the door for the negative version, so if anyone wants to know how to tank the competition, here you go:

From tests I have done, it is possible to impact serps with low quality links, just not to the degree some people seem to be implying it does.

Clay_More -- MSG# 4677852 -- Page 2, Post 13 @ 30 Post/Page
Here: [webmasterworld.com...]
That's because to seriously impact the SERPs with negative SEO you have to build links as if you were trying to "fly under the radar" and "increase rankings" rather than making it obvious.

You stated previously if you could figure out the pattern, or something to that effect -- The pattern is "appear to be trying to not get caught building links" while appearing to be trying to "increase rankings" -- It's really simple to do and I wouldn't ever use a Neg-SEO service to do it.

The first month, contract a couple $5 guest blog posts [make sure the posts are in broken English of course], then go back to what you were doing.

Second month, try a few more [4-8] $5 [broken English] guest blog posts and add some forum link drops to the mix. Go back to what you normally do -- Nothing will happen.

Third month, add even more [broken-English] guest blog links [2x or 3x per week], increase the forum link drops and sign up for long-term ["undetectable"] directory additions.

If the site hasn't tanked yet, month 4 hit 'em with 20,000 inbound links all at once -- Keep doing it and eventually the site you're aiming at will tank and they won't be able to figure out how to recover -- It takes almost none of your time and costs very little to tank a site due to the "penalty mentality" Google has decided to run with.

---

Note: I don't normally post about "how to do negative stuff", but Google needs to fix this sh*t, so I hope people understand how it's done and feel free to use it until Google fixes their broken system and mentality -- Penalties don't bring links back to citations; penalties simply change who creates the links and who's site they point to. Period!

[brotherhood of LAN]

We seem to be going round in circles. If the remaining conversation is about regulation of search engines, that's for another thread.

[goodroi]

This thread is for on-topic productive comments and not personal attacks. Please follow the forum rules or don't be surprised when you are edited.

[dvduval]

Google has a long road to making me their #1 fan again, and I'm probably no more than a tiny spec on Google Earth to them now. I spend less time thinking about Google now. There are other ways to market. Google is great for helping me search a site like Wikipedia. It is great for helping me find the the top few sites in an industry (though could be one that is deeper and penalized).

I personally have a popular software product, and people linked in the footer. I got penalized for that. Complicated to disavow (and as referenced earlier it seems to be a placebo). I don't really feel I need to feel like I did something wrong for requiring a link back for years to my product. It worked well for a long time. Obviously, the people that linked to me had a choice in the matter (ex. don't use my software).

Now SEO is such a "dirty" business, and stories like this don't make me want to be part of the whole Google/SEO field. It seems like a monopoly where there are few winners, and I am powerless to do much to help the situation. A powerful dark money group paying to take down sites with opposing views is VERY REAL, and average netizens are probably not going even notice.

It seems that one of the most result producing SEO strategies for me would indeed be to try to take down my competitors. I'm a pretty smart guy. I'm sure with careful planning, and rolling out links over a period of time, I could be extremely effective in this area. Fortunately, I'm not that desperate. I'm sure some people are.

I feel my relationship with Google is more like what I have with my Cable or Cellular provider. There isn't all that much choice in the matter, so I just try not to get screwed more than anybody else. This thread presents another way to get screwed! I don't *not* use them if they have something that will help me, but I'm open to the possibility that one day there might be better choices.

[fathom]

It's quite simple really - if you can penalise your own site, you can penalise any site.

But the desire to waste your time & energy on a website that isn't your own and where you have no potential of earning anything from, is a hard sell for those that do have the time & desire to waste their energy on it.

That is why folks that are upset with Google stance advocate Negative SEO as "so easy" because they have done it for years (based on your premise... if you penalize your own site you can do it to any site) they want to go back to the days when they could use such techniques for longer periods on their own domains because that was the easiest sell.

[Pjman]

Simply put the title of the thread says it all.

In the past the method was to recreate what your top seo competitor did.

Today's method, start with the same and then blast 2 billion s$!t links at your top 30 competitors. Got it!

Yes, it works!

[ColourOfSpring]

But the desire to waste your time & energy on a website that isn't your own and where you have no potential of earning anything from, is a hard sell for those that do have the time & desire to waste their energy on it.

I mentioned this already in this thread, but of course you can outsource the work, and for what cost? Mix up a few cheap link building services and you might spend $20 to $30 on a competitor. That's the cost of a few clicks these days in many commercial niches. You could even just spend $5 and get "lucky".

The "it's too much hassle" argument doesn't hold much water.

[aakk9999]

The "it's too much hassle" argument doesn't hold much water.

It is too much hastle. Or do you believe that as many webmasters that were previously building links to promote their own sites are now engaging in negative SEO and building links to their competitors' sites to tank them?

[aristotle]

Well it's a different matter for political organizations that have millions of dollars to spend, and whose members are motivated by hate. These types of people see nothing wrong with using underhanded methods to sabotage an opponent's website. They're already using DDOS attacks, and they'll jump at the chance to use this flaw in Google's algorithm for a similar purpose.

This situation that Google has created has the potential to cause a lot of harm to society, and it's very irresponsible for Google to let it continue like this.

[ColourOfSpring]

It is too much hastle. Or do you believe that as many webmasters that were previously building links to promote their own sites are now engaging in negative SEO and building links to their competitors' sites to tank them?

Clearly it's not too much hassle given the amount of negative SEO services that are being offered out there, and also the amount of nudge-nudge-wink-wink "regular" SEO services that exist as if the last 2 years never happened.

[EditorialGuy]

I can't help thinking of the "law of unintended consequences."

What if you try to bring down a competitor's site with negative SEO and the competitor gets a boost instead?

The whole concept of "negative SEO" is based on the notion that Google can't tell legitimate links from purchased links. If that notion is correct, isn't it risky to assume that Google's antispam team will correctly identify the unnatural links that you've bought for your competitor and punish the apparent buyer?

[dvduval]

The whole concept of "negative SEO" is based on the notion that Google can't tell legitimate links from purchased links. If that notion is correct, isn't it risky to assume that Google's antispam team will correctly identify the unnatural links that you've bought for your competitor and punish the apparent buyer?

When there are several competitors for a keyword, and reasonable attempts to be anonymous are taken, I don't think it would be possible for Google to know. For example, maybe someone is hired on a freelance site, and the only information shared is through skype. A personal assisant can be hired for less than $20 for a day's work.

What is scarier to me is someone that has a far more elaborate scheme more on the level of corporate or political espionage. For example, on a hot issue like gay marriage or gun control, funding could originate from multiple sources with varying strategies that don't target the same sites or results, but the overall effect is the SERPS get skewed.

And there is already ample evidence of paid posters in places like Facebook, forums and blogs whose job it is to sway opinion. On the content side it is already happening, and most likely it is happening with links too.

As this things scales larger, I think smaller and less conspicuous negative SEO will be especially difficult to track.

And really why my interest in Google and SEO is much less now. It's getting to be a dirty business, where so often the bad guys get a nice pay off. I saw it happen in my industry (directories), after making numerous reports to google that were seemingly ignored, or where the response was too late.

Obviously, Google has responded strongly now, but there is already a severe weakness in the new strategy, and especially small businesses stand the greatest chance of being impacted.

[fathom]

Clearly it's not too much hassle given the amount of negative SEO services that are being offered out there, and also the amount of nudge-nudge-wink-wink "regular" SEO services that exist as if the last 2 years never happened.

Anyone can add a website... that does not mean they have clients, nor does it mean they ever offered services to anyone, and it certainly doesn't mean they have a successful business model.

The thing about anonymity it works against you when you are trying to land business.

Not sure why broken English is needed... I have seen more than enough Manual Reviews & PENGUINized domains that has no broken English posted linked. That sounds more like a theory and not genuine instructions on a "how to post".

Here's the problem with hiring a 3rd party... it isn't how much you spend on a single competitor it's how much you need to spend on all of them to make a big enough dent in results for you to get your domain above all of them - let's not forget picking on a single competitor isn't going to provide you any direct return. Even if you are #2 and they are #1 does not guarantee you'll be #1 if you bump the top guy out.

If all you want to do is show people what is possible... that is a good discussion thread but it isn't a great strategy for ranking yourself better. Not sure why anyone would spent earned revenue on harming anyone else if there wasn't a big plus for yourself.

You got to get rid of more than one and of course all the demonstrations I have seen are based on a single domain... not a swath of results.

I can see the big plus for some guy that can't use that stuff to rank his webspam domains anymore... which is why Google is generally not listening. (IMHO)

[ColourOfSpring]

Anyone can add a website... that does not mean they have clients, nor does it mean they ever offered services to anyone, and it certainly doesn't mean they have a successful business model.

I did a quick search on fiverr.com for "negative SEO" - results back showed service providers with 302 reviews, 90 reviews, 55 reviews, 710 reviews, 160 reviews, 338 reviews, 483 reviews, 150 reviews, 53 reviews, 108 reviews, 21 reviews, 70 reviews, 18 reviews, 60 reviews, 78 reviews, 80 reviews, 31 reviews, 34 reviews....on and on and on - I could list hundreds more services, all used and reviewed. To be clear here, a review/vote is someone who's hired and used a service, and then reviewed it - this doesn't even count those that don't leave reviews. Having dug a big deeper into the services being offered, the reviews look very favourable. It certainly proves there are plenty of people who have an appetite for negative SEO.

And to be honest, fiverr.com is just the public side of negative SEO. The more pernicious side (in my view) are the blackhats / spammers who use negative SEO when entering a niche, or if they privately provide a "Special Offer" service in a forum (you know the types of services). The cost of publishing toxic links is negligible / even free (when using in addition to building links for a short-term "churn" site).

Here's the problem with hiring a 3rd party... it isn't how much you spend on a single competitor it's how much you need to spend on all of them to make a big enough dent in results for you to get your domain above all of them - let's not forget picking on a single competitor isn't going to provide you any direct return. Even if you are #2 and they are #1 does not guarantee you'll be #1 if you bump the top guy out.

You don't need to target "all of them" - just a handful, or even just one if that website has a point of view you don't like (as others have mentioned, it's not always about commercial competitors). If you're in a market where you need to target hundreds, you're probably in the wrong market anyway (a saturated one). If you're a drainage company in MyTown, then you'll find there's probably no more than a handful of serious competitors.

[ColourOfSpring]

What if you try to bring down a competitor's site with negative SEO and the competitor gets a boost instead?

If spammy links with highly targeted anchor text works as a link building technique in 2014, then it's only in the very short term. I think if there's anything we've learnt in the last 2 years, it's that Google tend to crawl and identify these links as unnatural and either penalise the site algorithmically or manually, unless the site has some stellar authority links as mitigation - in which case, since Google can identify the links as unnatural, probably just neutralise them.

Actually, you raise perhaps an unintended point here - a competitor's site could be used as the canary in the coalmine. In any case, I think it's obviously risky to think that low quality links are a good SEO technique in 2014 (or indeed, even in 2012 or 2010!).

[fathom]

Guys that are gifted with Negative SEO abilities wouldn't fake anything right?

Except the fake links, fake DMCA takedown orders, fake guest posts (in fake Broken English), fake comments, fake forum posts, fake natural link removal requests, oh come on now... fake reviews isn't too much of a stretch to post how good you are about faking stuff! Is it?

If you're in a market where you need to target hundreds, you're probably in the wrong market anyway (a saturated one). If you're a drainage company in MyTown, then you'll find there's probably no more than a handful of serious competitors.

If competition is that weak and you are at least a mediocre provider of a service it would be better to focus on your ONE domain... obviously if your domain sucks that badly not even Negative SEO will help.

[ColourOfSpring]

fathom, come on - are you saying that the literally hundreds of fiverr.com offers, each with dozens/hundreds of favourable reviews are all reviews they've faked themselves? That's not how fiverr works anyway - individual accounts that have paid for the service can leave a review, nobody else can. That's quite a desperate attempt to downplay the amount of services not only on offer, but being used by individuals and reviewed favourably.

If competition is that weak and you are at least a mediocre provider of a service it would be better to focus on your ONE domain... obviously if your domain sucks that badly not even Negative SEO will help.

Why can't someone use negative SEO while improving their own site? (do both). You are not thinking ruthlessly enough! :)

[CaptainSalad2]

It’s hard to believe some people doubt the lows a human being will go to get on top of other human beings. Its possible some of you have lived very, very sheltered lives?

Considering there is (apparently) 20% of people in the world who don’t blink twice before beating their own women/children I think it’s a stretch to believe a moral compass would stop them bringing down their competition given the chance? You give a human being a weapon, history shows they will always use it against others!

Does negative SEO work? I don't know yet, when penguin refreshes ill see if the negative seo services I brought from Google PPC advertisers for a test site I run are effective, I suspect they will but that's my best guess!

[aakk9999]

@ColourOfSpring, @CaptainSalad2

Have you done it? Have you bought links and pointed to a competitor and in that way engaged in a Negative SEO?

[CaptainSalad2]

No only a test site(s) of my own, I get all work from referral word of mouth so don't have competitors personally!

[ColourOfSpring]

Considering there is (apparently) 20% of people in the world who don’t blink twice before beating their own women/children I think it’s a stretch to believe a moral compass would stop them bringing down their competition given the chance? You give a human being a weapon, history shows they will always use it against others!

Agreed, and remember negative SEO isn't illegal or likely to put the perpetrator in trouble. Sure, there might be some legal precedent set in the future (unlikely in my opinion), but it's a "crime" without a punishment - other than if your conscience troubles you after you do it - so there's nothing to stop people doing it other than their conscience. As you point out CS2, poll enough people, and you'll find plenty who wouldn't be troubled by their conscience.

Have you done it? Have you bought links and pointed to a competitor and in that way engaged in a Negative SEO?

I've not done it, but been on the receiving end for 2 sites I own. I can see exactly how I've been relegated by Google - spammed anchors pointing to my site in the hundreds have resulted in me losing rankings for those very same keywords - and those keywords were hugely important to me for both sites.

[ColourOfSpring]

I get all work from referral word of mouth so don't have competitors personally!

So do I, but that's how web development is anyway - who can decide on a web developer just searching in Google? A good reference can prove a lot to the prospective new client without risking their business on an unknown.

[netmeg]

Considering there is (apparently) 20% of people in the world who don’t blink twice before beating their own women/children I think it’s a stretch to believe a moral compass would stop them bringing down their competition given the chance? You give a human being a weapon, history shows they will always use it against others!

It's not a moral compass thing. It's not even a money thing. It's a time and effort thing.

Every site is vulnerable to something, be it crap links pointed at it, DDOS, bot attacks, repeated hack attempts. There's no such thing as a bullet proof internet.

[ColourOfSpring]

It's not a moral compass thing. It's not even a money thing. It's a time and effort thing.

If it's not a money thing, but it's a time and effort thing, then outsource it as hundreds (at least) seem to be doing.

[CaptainSalad2]

>>It's a time and effort thing.<<

I agree but the sad thing about outsourcing is £100 can buy a hell of a lot of time and effect from a guy in india I would guess?!

[CaptainSalad2]

lol COS, great minds ;)

[ColourOfSpring]

:)

[goodroi]

A member earlier in the thread mentioned negative seo on Fiverr. When I looked at Fiverr I found the claims not to be accurate or at least misrepresented.

The member stated that there were 18 reviewed providers when they searched for negative seo & that they could list hundreds more services. Since a review only comes from when someone buys it, we could assume there is a large volume of negative seo being promoted and bought on Fiverr. I could not find evidence to support that and did find evidence against that claim.

If you search for negative seo on Fiverr you will see there are only about 9 providers that specifically mentioned negative seo in the title (several of them warning against it).

The vast majority of link building providers with reviews on Fiverr are not advocating negative seo. Many of them are not even link builders, they are providing audits and reports for people that suspect negative seo. Other people that provide link building services have been reviewed by people who are looking to build up their own links not negative seo.

I am not saying that there is no negative seo at Fiverr. I agree that there is a large volume of link building services on Fiverr and a smart SEO can potentially use it for good or bad. Let's all be more careful when discussing this hot button issue and avoid statements that are wrong or could be misunderstood.

[ColourOfSpring]

I've identified 23 negative SEO services (what I believe to be negative SEO services) on fiverr.com and I'll list them here - all of the links will be in plain text but you can easily copy/paste them into your browser.

In my mind, these services are deliberately targeted to those who are looking for negative SEO services. Some of the services below explicitly sell their services as negative SEO, some others are more coy and say that the services "may impact negatively" on the sites having links built to them. You can make up your own mind if that's them being coy, or them earnestly warning their prospective clients that they may experience negative results with their own sites. It's interesting that they use the word negative a lot in their titles and descriptions, and that they come up for "negative SEO" search on fiverr.com.

I've appended number of reviews and queued (pending, yet to be carried out) jobs for each offer.

1. fiverr.com/christinemarj/create-70000-live-backlinks?context=single_query&context_type=auto (168 reviews, 11 orders in queue)

2. fiverr.com/sagoongerservic/post-175k-huge-back-links-blog-comments-beware-for-negative-seo-impact?context=single_query&context_type=auto (439 reviews, 26 orders in queue)

3. fiverr.com/kelly_john/create-250000-links?context=single_query&context_type=auto (185 reviews, 16 orders in queue)

4. fiverr.com/urfembillboard/negative-seo-dangerous-links?context=single_query&context_type=auto (53 reviews, 5 orders in queue)

5. fiverr.com/urfembillboard/create-monsterous-250000-backlinks-negative-seo-danger--2?context=single_query&context_type=auto (163 reviews, 4 orders in queue)

6. fiverr.com/seonegative/negative-seo-risk-300000-backlinks?context=single_query&context_type=auto (151 reviews, 10 orders in queue)

7. fiverr.com/xrumercheapback/do-drip-feed-blast-with-negative-seo?context=single_query&context_type=auto (11 reviews, 6 orders in queue)

8. fiverr.com/angelowparerra/post-250k-links-beware-it-may-act-as-negative-seo?context=single_query&context_type=auto (108 reviews, 6 orders in queue)

9. fiverr.com/philipsouthee/create-massive-180000-backlinks-may-act-as-negative-seo?context=single_query&context_type=auto (483 reviews, 10 orders in queue)

10. fiverr.com/juliaroberts90/make-240k-blog-comments-backlinks-may-act-as-negative-seo?context=single_query&context_type=auto (1 review, 0 orders in queue)

11. fiverr.com/mariahaustin/blast-225k-mix-blog-comments-risk-negative-seo?context=single_query&context_type=auto (3 reviews, 0 orders in queue)

12. fiverr.com/seoavenger/post-210k-quality-and-productive-back-links?context=single_query&context_type=auto (12 reviews, 2 orders in queue)

13. fiverr.com/seoavenger/do-immense-225k-backlinks-blast-for-your-site-beware-for-negative-seo-impacts?context=single_query&context_type=auto (10 reviews, 0 orders in queue)

14. fiverr.com/sagoongerservic/make-powerful-190-000-backlinks-be-careful-with-negative-seo-may-harm-website?context=single_query&context_type=auto (21 reviews, 1 order in queue)

15. fiverr.com/seoavenger/create-massive-link-juice-185k-back-links-for-your-site-it-may-negative-seo?context=single_query&context_type=auto (9 reviews, 0 order in queue)

16. fiverr.com/sagoongerservic/make-super-power-sgs-link-juice-blast?context=single_query&context_type=auto (9 reviews, 1 order in queue)

17. fiverr.com/seoavenger/make-hp-135000-back-links-with-comments-for-your-site?context=single_query&context_type=auto (6 reviews, 0 orders in queue)

18. fiverr.com/tuhin2u/create-50-000-blog-comment-backlinks-from-scrapebox-blast?context=single_query&context_type=auto (1308 reviews, 6 orders in queue)

19. fiverr.com/xrumercheapback/create-12000-spam-links-with-3000-comments-auto-approved?context=single_query&context_type=auto (53 reviews, 3 orders in queue)

20. fiverr.com/jcservices/create-super-powerful-160-000-backlinks-be-careful-of-its-n-impact?context=single_query&context_type=auto (16 reviews, 3 orders in queue)

21. fiverr.com/jcservices/create-massive-175-000-backlinks-be-careful-of-its-negative-impact?context=single_query&context_type=auto (12 reviews, 1 order in queue)

22. fiverr.com/jcservices/create-massive-150-000-backlinks-be-careful-of-its-negative-impact?context=single_query&context_type=auto (18 reviews, 0 orders in queue)

23. fiverr.com/jcservices/create-massive-180-000-backlinks-be-careful-of-its-negative-impact?context=single_query&context_type=auto (70 reviews, 0 orders in queue)

[goodroi]

@ColourOfSpring - 23 is not hundreds as you previously claimed but it is five more than I found.

Also many of your 23 are reposts by a single provider, not sure if you noticed this.

If you spend the time to fully read the descriptions you will also notice many of these 23 are talking about tiered link building. Here is just one quote from the project descriptions "Use them for your web 2.0 tier 2 or tier 3 Or you risk negative effect !" That does not seem coy to me.

When someone is talking about web 2.0 tiered links, they are not talking about negative SEO. They are talking about a more recent link scheme that can boost rankings. I do not advocate it because it is easy to screw it up and its horrible for long term businesses.


I will restate my earlier position:

I am not saying that there is no negative seo at Fiverr. I agree that there is a large volume of link building services on Fiverr and a smart SEO can potentially use it for good or bad. Let's all be more careful when discussing this hot button issue and avoid statements that are wrong or could be misunderstood.

[fathom]

I've not done it, but been on the receiving end for 2 sites I own. I can see exactly how I've been relegated by Google - spammed anchors pointing to my site in the hundreds have resulted in me losing rankings for those very same keywords - and those keywords were hugely important to me for both sites.

Me, I try to fine the logic in it.

You were randomly attacked by different competitors using different Negative SEO services... that's a huge leap of faith.

Or your competitors got together and form an alliance... probably not.

Surely, it wasn't the same competitor using the same Negative SEO service... was it? Not sure what the point of that would be... must have been a double down "2 for 1 deal".

Using this thread as a guage - you have never used Negative SEO services, and the other guy is merely testing it own his own test site ... not a real site with real world value just some useless domain with crappy content that taints the test to start with.

I don't need to use DIY Blackhatters that can't rank their own domains anymore using their craft... so that is 3 not using Negative SEO... the thread starter sound like they are a Negative SEOer noting:

Note: I don't normally post about "how to do negative stuff"

So that is 4:0 ... no idea why they would hire a 3rd party to do the job.