Client just asked me to NEG SEO competitor!

[CaptainSalad2]

Just received the following (details removed)

We might be interested in some negative SEO....

http: //www.domain1.com
http: //www.domain2.com
http: //www.domain3.com

All rank in amongst us, for example, when googling "keywords".

They are the competition and have been playing some dirty tricks.... therefore whereas healthy competition is good, they've overstepped that.

What could your chap do?

Needless to say im not going to do it but I have directed them to search Google for negative SEO services.

Good job Google!

[edited by: goodroi at 12:03 pm (utc) on Jul 22, 2014]
[edit reason] delinked example domains [/edit]

[goodroi]

If this is the first time you have been contacted by a client looking to sabotage their competition you might have not been doing consulting for a long time. Negative SEO aka Google Bowling aka Link Sabotage has been going on for over 10 years.

I remember 15 years ago, I was being approached to delete DMOZ links that were making competitors rank.

Attacking competition is not new. What is relatively new is that Google allows us to disavow links.

Each of us needs to decide where our ethical boundary lies.

[netmeg]

Yep.

Educating clients since 1996

[CaptainSalad2]

This is the first time I have been asked by a client if I can perform a "negative SEO attack" as a service!

The same client asked me if I could "hack" another site recently to take them down, my exact words "worry about improving your own site, produce a video" (which is the perfect suggestion for the service they are trying to sell). The reply, can I do neg seo? sigh!

Goodroi, disavow tool is all well and good but when you are talking about small sites with a small budgets they don't have the time/resources/funds to disavow a couple million domains, and they certainly don't pay me or "SMALL" TIME seo's enough to do it m8!

The disavow tool is great for big sites or webmaster who do it themselves but even with my personal hobby site I have been working flat out for 14 months now, could I afford to spend the time disavowing millions of domains when it doesn't make me any money YET?No, no I couldn't! So the disavow maybe great for the big boys, established players... but A very poor solution for those trying to get some initial traction or to small to make more than a couple hundred a month from a site!

Of course it depends HOW BIG the neg SEO attack is!

[randle]

I remember 15 years ago, I was being approached to delete DMOZ links that were making competitors rank.

Which was an exercise in reducing the amount of "good" the algorithm was calculating for a particular site, not adding negative reflections on it.

The problem with the approach Google has these days (in my worthless opinion) is they got way to infatuated with negative factors. Way back in the day they would gather up all the "signals of quality" sites had, crunch their algorithm and then rank the sites based on their scores.

Then about 6 years ago they got frustrated with their inability to shoo away all the sites they felt were ranking higher than they wanted them to. So, someone at the plex came up with the bright idea to run around gathering up "signals of bad quality" (traits Google felt were disingenuous to their goal of having sites they prefer rank higher than ones they didn't).

So, "bad traits" took on more importance than "good traits" because the focus became more and more about rooting out sites that would rank high despite Googles disagreement with that; "These sites are low quality, lets find some common traits and algorithmically punish the ones that have them and drive them from our midst".

Now we have web masters running around the internet like lunatics screaming at owners to remove links to their sites, deleting half their content because Google probably thinks its "to thin" and "SEO" companies offering services that can "de-rank" sites....

Sometimes you gotta live with a little bad to bring forth the good, sometimes what you think is bad, ain't so bad to others and they might be able to decide that for themselves with their trusty back buttons.

Between the over kill on cleansing the results of these bad traits, and the over reliance on signals that large brands give off, the results are a lot like vanilla ice cream these days - there good, but man are they bland and what once was a fun experience searching around is now pretty much an exercise in finding good deals on replacement parts.

[webcentric]

@randle - A fine summary of the current state of affairs if you want to blame the whole mess on Google.

I'm sure at one point, the boys and girls in Mountain View had this utopian dream of indexing the web and organizing it in a way where the best content floated to the top.

SEO (white hat, black hat, negative, positive or whatever) is the act of manipulating that process (even if it also began as some utopian dream of just being worthy of being listed).

Business is war and being as though there's a war on and all is fair in love and war, the combatants have turned the battlefield of the index into a place where non-combatants are shredded right along with the warring parties. The casualties are mounting. The victorious are reveling in their current success, possibly oblivious to the fact that they could be the the next victim in their own brutal game. Someone will probably come along and erect tombstones and monuments to the fallen some day but until then, the battle just rages while the combatants seem oblivious to the carnage they are creating, the utopian dream they have destroyed.

This discussion and so many others on this board is really about a commercial war being waged. The simple solution is to make all the warring parties pay to engage in the war and move the battlefield from the SERPs to the ad section. This is what needs to happen and until it does, the blood and guts will continue to flow unabated and new brands of negative SEO will find their way onto the battlefield faster than anyone can find a way to counteract them. I content that we foster our own Karma, even as we love to complain about that which we have created with our own hands.

[superclown2]

What happens when the competitor retaliates and negs his site?

[CaptainSalad2]

Scorched earth policy bro, burn everyone around you to the ground! Why should g care? They don't make a penny from organics, human nature is to take everyone with you when attacked, I see no reason why it won't play out the same online as it does in the real life..

Human beings claim victory in defeat, but only as long as they take their enemy with them!

[netmeg]

Why should g care? They don't make a penny from organics

Not really true, and generally Google does tend to take a longer term view of things.

[CaptainSalad2]

It's the Perfect excuse to move to all ads for commercial queries, web masters bringing it on themselves with their own human destructive nature! Google isn't going to want to try and morally police the internet to make what...less money? Harder work for themselves? No...

Netmeg the long term future of google is to break into 3. Main areas! 'google services' (only Adwords) 'Google products' (only Adwords) and 'google queries' (organic only with knowledge graph) that's the end game for google! Don't agree? Seriously?

[EditorialGuy]

It's the Perfect excuse to move to all ads for commercial queries

I don't know if it's an excuse, but it could be a reason.

[netmeg]

Netmeg the long term future of google is to break into 3. Main areas! 'google services' (only Adwords) 'Google products' (only Adwords) and 'google queries' (organic only with knowledge graph) that's the end game for google! Don't agree? Seriously?

Don't agree. Seriously.

[CaptainSalad2]

I don't know if it's an excuse, but it could be a reason.

true

Don't agree. Seriously.

I knew you wouldn't m8. Seriously ;)

[turbocharged]

CaptainSalad2, just send your client over to Fiverr. I see many nseo service providers there have plenty of orders waiting and will take care of your client at a cheap price. Heck, at $5 a pop, most can afford to spam scores of websites without breaking the bank.