Negative Search Engine Optimization (NSEO) has been hotly debated in the SEO sector for well over a decade now, but despite all the noise made by Search Engine Optimizers around the globe it is still one of the most misunderstood SEO tactics of all.
That’s because the majority of professionals in the sector still see Negative SEO as little more than link-spam, malicious linking attacks (Googlebombing,) and/or “Hacks” without ever considering the true scope of possible attack vectors. What’s more, Google has deliberately downplayed the efficacy of Negative SEO attacks for at least a decade now, thus helping to muddy the waters for those of us whose task it is to clean up the damage caused by NSEO used against legitimate enterprise.
Add to that the “Code of Silence” in the SEO sector, because most ethical professionals “don’t want to give ideas to the bad guys…” and what you have is the perfect storm to create a rapidly expanding field of malicious actors using an array of underhanded techniques unchallenged.
It’s Time to Take the Lid Off Negative SEO
What follows is an overview of the various NSEO attack vectors. It’s not exhaustive, because the field is expanding constantly, but it’s a more comprehensive resource than you’ll find anywhere else online. And we’re constantly adding to it as we discover new Negative SEO tactics. Where ways to mitigate or prevent an attack exist, we also provide a brief breakdown of these in the expanded details for each approach.
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Vector
Description
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Build bad links with the intent of triggering a link manipulation flag/penalty, including “Masquerade Posting” (guest posting, impersonating the target)
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Contact sites, asking them to remove links to your target. The idea here is to weaken the victim’s authority.
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Create fake negative reviews to deter your target’s prospects. This will also reduce overall scores/ratings etc.
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Create overly positive reviews with the intent of getting the account hit for manipulation.
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Flag the target’s positive reviews as spam, with the intent of getting them removed and lowering the overall quality score..
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Flag an account for review manipulation tactics. This approach works well alongside the “FakeReviews(Good)” approach.
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Copy the target’s content and publish it across multiple sites/sources. The intent is to impact their rankings and traffic. Google may then also not select the victim’s original version as its primary result.
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Copy the target’s content, then file DMCAs against them. The intent is to get their site out of the SERPS.
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Link to multiple variant URIs of your target’s high-value pages. Change case, append false parameters/values, etc. This wastes Google’s resources and crawl allocation, among other effects.
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Copy content from target, ideally including markup, styling etc. Modify the content to include safe search trigger terms, etc. Republish variants in multiple places and canonicalize back to your target’s original version. G will consolidate the content and attribute it to the original, causing “consequences.”
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Mass requests, heavy requests (big image uploads, hotlinking etc.) The idea is to slow/crash the server.
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Exploits, brute force attacks, account abuse, social engineering, XSS, basically anything that permits access to your target’s server, database, or rendered content, for misuse.
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Abuse comments on your target’s site. This can be used to trigger safe-search, so the target site only shows in SERPS for a much smaller percentage of searches.
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Deliciously Simple: Take a dropped domain that’s been hit by a Google’s Algorithmic markdown, or better still, a manual action – revive it with some trashy AI content, then 301 it to the target.
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Make a page on your site, then use a 302 Redirect, or a Canonical Link to point to a target URI for a period of time, before revoking the 302. Technically, Google will associate rankings with the temporary origin.
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Obtaining a similar domain name and either siphoning traffic or misrepresenting the target website.
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Google Business Profiles (and some other directories) permit edits and/or “suggestions” to listings. These can seriously disrupt your target’s business activities and income.
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Find “Bad Press” against your target and perform link building for it, with the intent of it floating up the SERPS.
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Find “Bad Press” against your target and distribute it, reference it in communities etc. This will increase the quantity of relevant results on sites that tend to rank well.
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Conceptually, if certain searches and user patterns occur at volume within a window of time, it will likely cause Google to reassess user intent and/or what is being sought, leading the search engine to suggest a competing item and/or website.
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Jumping in on complaints, negative comments and reviews etc. and stirring the
sh*tpot¹, exacerbating the situation, provoking staff etc.
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Create social profiles and/or community accounts, and impersonate the target or their staff. Bad conduct and disgusting responses can lead to a severely damaged reputation. Worse, certain platforms will de-rank businesses for such content.
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Assuming for a moment that Google actually pays attention to what “Users” do in the SERPS… How “people²” are avoiding your site and/or abandoning it in favor of another competitor could be used against your target quite easily. Note: This approach would require scale and time.
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An old type of Negative SEO reputation attack which uses derogatory link-text to get the victim’s site or profile to rank for search terms which negatively affect his/her reputation.
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Theoretically, you could ping Google a sitemap that was redirected, with HREFLANG data for URIs… and Google would associate the destination with the original URIs, thus abusing their canonical system.
(This was fixed in 2017/2018. So maybe Google finally took some ACTUAL action against NSEO?)
Note: This is why HREFLANG requires all items to list each other!
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¹ Apologies, Darth NA had had a bit too much coffee when we were compiling this list.
² Or the Indian/Bangladeshi Click Farm you hired…
Negative Digital Marketing (NDM)
While the following malicious behaviors do not actually fall under the heading of NSEO, they are nevertheless real threats against your online business which can impact both ROI and the accuracy of your company data.
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Vector
Description
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Mass-reporting a domain, email address or phone number as spam can and will result in blacklisting, reduced mail delivery rates, and other undesirable consequences.
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Bots and bot-farms clicking on a target site’s ads will impact ROI, waste ad-budget, and can negatively affect ad-selection and display
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Bot-farming a specific page, an entire section or site, or even just random pages with fake traffic will ruin basic analytics data and necessitates the need for filtering, exclusions, and cleaning before any information of value can be extracted from the data.
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