This is one of the most commonly used Negative SEO attack vectors because it’s one of the simplest. Its effects can be wide-ranging, and although a “Boost the Bad” attack does not directly affect the target company’s website in a negative way, the reputational and organic SERP ranking consequences and knock-on effects can be considerable if this type of attack is left to go unchecked.
In essence, this vector relies on finding bad press about your victim, and publicizing it as much as possible across various online platforms and outlets. In many cases attackers will also simply fabricate some negative publicity against the target, if there’s nothing legitimate and/or sufficiently severe to be found by the malicious actor’s initial research.
With that said, the “Boost the Bad” NSEO attack is exponentially more effective if there’s already some bad press to build a bad-publicity offensive on. This highlights the need for preventive Online Reputation Management (ORM) regimes by legitimate, ethical online businesses, in order to minimize the potential impact of actions taken by such bad actors.
Breakdown of a “Boost the Bad” Attack
Step 1: Dig up some Dirt on your Victim
There are few companies out there whose customer service is good enough to prevent any and all negative publicity from making its way into the public domain online. That aspect alone makes an attacker’s task of putting together this type of campaign considerably easier.
Additionally, websites like BBB, Complaintsboard, Complaints.com, Ripoff Report, and others are practically custom-made to facilitate the search for – often unfounded – adverse hype or propaganda against more or less any business entity operating online.
Once one or more suitable complaints or accusations have been unearthed on these or other consumer websites, the offensive moves on to the next phase:
Step 2: Surface the Bad Press
In most cases, complaints against a legitimate, ethical company will be a few years old, since persistently upsetting ones customers is not conducive to long-term business success and prosperity. This being the case, the first thing an attacker needs to do is to “freshen up” the listed grievances by leveling similar, plausible accusations against the target, and referring to the original, older ones.
Most consumer complaints sites feature comments sections on their review/complaint pages¹, which make it easy for anyone to add a further “What they said!” gripe, and thus give new wind to an age-old and long-forgotten squawk.
It’s perhaps needless to say that these new complaints have to sound plausible in order for the attack to be successful. Excessive hyperbole, such as “They ate my dog when they were supposed to clip it!²” or “They tried to sell my wife to an Arab Sheik instead of performing a root canal!” will result in the new complaints simply discrediting themselves before they can gain any real momentum.
With the bad press suitably freshened up, the attacker moves on to:
Step 3: Boosting the Bad
At this point, what’s necessary is to widely refer to and amplify the old and new complaints across social media and consumer review platforms, as well as trade/market sector websites which allow commenting, by creating further loud complaints which all link back to the URL containing the original grievance and the attacker’s additional complaint.
The more noise, the better…
The principle here is to provide a massive boost in consumer buzz and inbound link relevance for the offending content, which will in turn float its URL/page onto Page 1 of the SERPs when anyone searches for the victim’s brand name. From a consumer-relations point of view, seeing a seriously negative review or complaint of this kind when searching for a company’s brand name is extremely toxic and likely to cause immediate abandonment.
And that’s before we get into the outright Negative SEO consequences which can follow in the wake of a “Boost the Bad” attack.
“But THERE ARE NO Negative SEO Consequences for this!”
I hear some of you cry.
There are of course plenty Search Engine Optimization “Eggspurts” who claim that you cannot hurt a company’s SEO efforts or SERP rankings by resurrecting and adding a link/sentiment “relevance boost” to negative reviews and/or consumer complaints.
These are the “professionals” who have never heard of Vitaly Borker and/or who have failed to keep up with the advances Google has made in the realm of sentiment analysis since 2011. That was when Borker publicly taunted the search giant about his use of universally negative publicity to get his business ranking at #1 for nearly every eyewear related money-term used online by American consumers. It’s also when the entire episode went globally viral after the New York Times picked up the story and ran with it, causing huge embarrassment for pretty much everyone at Google.
GOOGLE DOES NOT WANT ANOTHER BORKER INCIDENT ON ITS HANDS, EVER!
Count on it…
Which is exactly why large amounts of bad publicity can have a pronounced negative SEO impact, if it attracts enough attention. And which is why “Boosting the Bad” has become one of the vectors of choice in the NSEO world.
How to Defend Your Business and Site Against a “Boost the Bad” Attack
If you’ve been following this series of Negative SEO Attack Vector breakdowns, you’ll know what I’m going to say next: There is NO way to prevent this type of campaign from being launched against you.
There are, however, a number of ways to stop a negative publicity offensive from gaining any real traction:
- Stay on Top of Your Customer Service
As I mentioned previously, this type of malicious behavior is most effective when there is plenty of negative publicity to work with already. By making your company’s customer service as effective as possible, you’ll essentially prevent the very thing your attacker can use to hurt you, from being littered around the Internet. - Preventive Online Reputation Management
By creating positive publicity about your business, whether it be through charity drives, publicity stunts, customer loyalty incentive programs, or any one of the many other ways to enhance positive public sentiment, you’ll make it tougher for anyone to successfully attack your company’s reputation and brand name. - Keep an Eye Out for Trouble
If you monitor the web for negative publicity about your business, you’ll be able to respond to any attack immediately, instead of wondering what happened when your phone stops ringing and your revenue drops through the floor. A few simple social media alerts for brand-mentions, along with some well-chosen Google Alerts can create an early warning system that notifies you of any attack or consumer problem before it can gain momentum.
However, the most effective way to prevent a “Boost the Bad” negative SEO attack from harming your business is undoubtedly to keep your customers happy.
REMEMBER: THE FIRE CANNOT TAKE HOLD IF THERE’S NO FUEL TO BURN.
¹ Because by and large – and for whatever reason – such semi-ethical sites tend to be better at SEO than ethical operators. They therefore realize that fresh complaints will renew any existing review’s relevance in the eyes of Google and other search engines, and therefore increase the likelihood of fresh clicks to the URL, which in turn increases its potential to generate ad-revenue. They also know about the value of internal linking, but that is another story, beyond the scope of this article.
² Go ahead, laugh! I’ve seen more than a few clumsy attempts to Boost the Bad, which tried leveraging exactly this type of insane accusation.