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Whether you want it or not, Negative SEO is more real today than ever before, although it has always been part of the picture since the day it became clear that external factors can influence a site's standing with the search engines. In the future, it is not going away for sure - this is my take on where it could go, as well as some history and present day analysis.
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@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
(Past, Present and) Future
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Matt Cutts acknowledges the fact: 2007, Forbes http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/28/negative-search-google-tech-ebiz-cx_ag_0628seo.html
Google acknowledges the fact again: webmaster answer updated May 2012 http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34449
Cygnus: Stop Questioning Negative SEO http://www.seobook.com/stop-questioning-negative-seo
”
“
“There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking“
“Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking”
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Google Bowling Google Bombs Google Washing SEO Sabotage Negative SEO …and even online reputation management
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
External factors have influence on a site’s rankings
Poor attribution of duplicate content Site owners make mistakes
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Take anything that potentially has a negative effect and use it against a third party site
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
The concept of links as votes is the cornerstone of Google’s algorithm
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Use of anchor texts (Google bombs, Penguin) Quality of links (spammy, bad
neighbourhoods) Objectionable types of links (e.g. paid links) Speed of link acquisition Other unnatural patterns
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Bonus: How to spot a possible negative SEO campaign using MajesticSEO: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-use-majesticseo-to-identify-a-possible -negative-seo-campaign-by-irish-wonder/56921/
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Use of anchor texts can be subtler, e.g. more aggressive use of commercially meaningful anchor texts the site is already targeting
Pro: more difficult to spot, more difficult to prove
Con: may work in favour of the victim site
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
As a result:
Complete case study by Danny Sullivan: http://searchengineland.com/how-prweb-helps-distribute-crap-into-google-news-sites-140597
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
My “click here” case study:
(the complete study: http://www.stateofsearch.com/a-click-here-case-study/)
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
What’s spammier?
vs
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
What’s spammier?
vs
A comment spammer in local SERPs Interflora
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
A niche-specific criterion
Spammy links not stopping sites from ranking – multiple cases (Complete case study: http://www.irishwonder.syndk8.co.uk/2013 /02/27/how-does-the-casino-bonus-spam-work/
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Does the site have them already? -> spam/paid links report
No bad links? -> acquire some! Too cheap to acquire links on their behalf? ->
make it look like they are doing it! (forum posts with their name/site asking for paid links, etc.)
You can also make sure they get some links from bad neighbourhoods
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
…Shitty infographic time!
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
(Imagine these animals, erm, shitting on each other’s head)
Niches known as PPC (porn, pills, casino)
Finance
Weight loss
Travel
Education
(Disclaimer: niche allocation is approximate and for illustrative purposes only)
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Again, this is a niche specific criterion
Result? Penalty due to a negative SEO campaign
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Result? Ranking in top 10 of one of the most competitive niches
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Or instead of building links, you can remove them…
A spike of interest caused by Penguin
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Ever got one of these?
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Do you see an opportunity for negative SEO here?
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Historically: issue with content attribution (e.g. scrapers outranking scraped sites)
Panda’s promise: fix the issue Reality: Google is no better with the duplicate
content attribution today than it used to be ages ago
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Davi
David Naylor’s original post ranking below sites that scraped/aggregated it
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Google announces that “we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site” – August 2012 http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/08/an-update-to-our-search-algorithms.html
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Increase in takedown requests as a result:
Complete study by Barry Schwartz: http://searchengineland.com/50-million-search-results-remove-from-google-this-year-by-dmca-request-143763
Google Transparency Report: top reported domains http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/domains/?r=all-time
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Year: 2011 A site scrapes another site’s content Access to scraped content is password protected
(so not indexable) The offending site files a DMCA against the
originating site The originating site’s reported page is removed
from the SERPs, DMCA notice displayed The originating site hires me to investigate the
case, contacts Google with explanation The originating site is reinstated in the SERPs,
timeline: 2 weeks
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Year: 2012 Site A scrapes site B Site C buys a sitewide links on site A Site A starts ranking for site B’s traffic rich
keywords above site B Site B files a DMCA, contacts site A’s host (but
not Google) Site A’s host takes action, now non-existent site
A still ranking in Google Site C gets a penalty, tries to use the disavow
tool, sees 1,500 links in GWMT that cannot be removed because they do not exist
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Site A scrapes site B
Site C buys a sitewide link on site
A Site A ranks higher
than site B
Site B files a DMCA, sends to site A’s
host
Site A’s host suspends it, site A
still ranking
Site C penalised, cannot disavow
1,500 links because they do not exist
This could be a perfect negative campaign if only site B did not suffer from it itself Fictionalised account of this case: http://01100111011001010110010101101011.co.uk/ 2013/02/50-shades-of-spam/
Once more to visualise this better:
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Indexable empty search results Use of insecure plugins Site structure causing duplicate onsite
content Bad redirects Etc.
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Bingo – your site is now about Viagra!
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
And it will get indexed…
…because…
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Sites get hacked According to Stop Badware, the three most
common types of badware affecting sites are: ◦ Malicious scripts ◦ .htaccess redirects ◦ Hidden iframes
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
My post on how to get rid of malware on a site: http://www.irishwonder.com/blog/ 2012/07/20/site-infected-by-malware-heres-what-you-should-do/
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Sometimes these will get your site banned even without a negative SEO campaign
High profile example: in April 2012 SEER Interactive got deindexed for 12 hours because, in Wil Reynolds’ words:
We relaunched our site and spiked our 404′s but since we were ranking for our brand and a lot of our blog posts, I said who cares, but as my friends dug through my site they found a LOT of architectural issues, lazy crap I never thought would impact us (and still don’t) but it is sloppy. ”
“
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/7-lessons-i-learned-while-being-banned -in-google-for-12-hours
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Google Suggest
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McDonald’s asks customers to talk about their experience, promotes a hashtag
Result:
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Burger King Twitter Account Hacked
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HMV fired employee vents on official Twitter account
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Is Negative SEO ever going to go away?
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
NO.
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
As long as there are negative factors, they will continue to be exploited
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Faking social presence – from squatting unclaimed profiles to hacking existing social accounts
Using any objectionable links (advertorials, other kinds of paid links, guest posts when they become the synonym of spam, anything else Google dims as bad
Hijacking AuthorRank Fake DMCAs (already happening but will likely
keep increasing) Fake disavow submissions
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Ranking your own site by dropping sites above it – was possible several years ago but more difficult now (unpredictable results)
Negative SEO for online reputation management – still works (with caveats)
Negative SEO as hate campaign – possible but not a business strategy
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
You cannot make your site 100% secure If it’s not economically viable to run a
negative campaign against a site, it will likely not happen
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Example: BBC.co.uk
How do you hijack this link profile?
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
Matt Cutts acknowledges the fact: 2007, Forbes http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/28/negative-search-google-tech-ebiz-cx_ag_0628seo.html
Google acknowledges the fact again: webmaster answer updated May 2012 http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34449
Cygnus: Stop Questioning Negative SEO http://www.seobook.com/stop-questioning-negative-seo
How to spot a possible negative SEO campaign using MajesticSEO: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-use-majesticseo-to-identify-a-possible-negative-seo-campaign-by-irish-wonder/56921/
PRWeb case study by Danny Sullivan: http://searchengineland.com/how-prweb-helps-distribute-crap-into-google-news-sites-140597
"Click here" case study: http://www.stateofsearch.com/a-click-here-case-study/ Casino bonus spam case study: http://www.irishwonder.syndk8.co.uk/2013/02/27/how-does-the-casino-
bonus-spam-work/ Google DMCA announcement: http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/08/an-update-to-our-search-
algorithms.html Complete DMCA case study by Barry Schwartz:
http://searchengineland.com/50-million-search-results-remove-from-google-this-year-by-dmca-request-143763
Google Transparency Report: top reported domains http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/domains/?r=all-time
Fiction story covering a DMCA case: http://01100111011001010110010101101011.co.uk/2013/02/50-shades-of-spam/
How to get rid of malware on a site: http://www.irishwonder.com/blog/ 2012/07/20/site-infected-by-malware-heres-what-you-should-do/ SEER Interactive 12-hour ban: http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/7-lessons-i-learned-while-being-banned -in-google-for-12-hours
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
All images are mine, except for the following: Slide 11 - http://www.lunametrics.com/ Slide 30 - http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/ Slide 32 - http://www.rainingpackets.com Slide 33 - http://searchengineland.com/ Slide 47 - http://gizmodo.com/ Slide 48 - http://www.businessinsider.com/
@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013 @irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013
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