Details
- Vector type:
- Reputation Attack
- Risk level:
- Low
- Impact level:
- Tiny
The most recognized version of this type of Negative SEO is causing a target page to rank for unwanted/unpleasant terms by using detrimental Link Text.
We all remember how funny it was when George W. Bush’s Wikipedia entry ranked globally at Number 1 for “Complete Failure,” right?
A variant is to push the influence to Images, rather than a web page (or pages). this happened to Donald Trump, when his portrait photos started to rank near the top of the image results for the query: “Totally Incompetent.”
This type of NSEO attack has no real negative impact on preexisting commercial SEO rankings. For example, suddenly ranking for pornography terms, or for “X is totally incompetent/a complete failure” etc. doesn’t cause other organic SERP rankings to drop for their relevant search terms.
It can, however, lead to negative association (people tend to go look, laugh, click and spread the word),
which can be problematic with your analytics and visitor data, as Google Search Console ends up with a load of useless/irrelevant impressions and increased clicks etc. Your analytics data will get tainted to a degree too.
Defense
There really isn’t one. Preventing this is 100% on Google, and how their systems work.
With that said, Google Bombing (or Washing) is (almost?) a thing of the past.
The public and viral George W. Bush/Complete Failure debacle forced Google to admit to the problem and finally do something about it. Consequently, the various changes the search giant has made to the way it handles links (topical relevance,) over the past years has also reduced the likelihood of Google Bombing still being an effective Negative SEO attack vector in 2024.