Negative SEO: Past, Present and Future - ThinkVis 2013

@irishwonder ThinkVisibility, March 2013

(Past, Present and) Future

@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”


  Google Bowling   Google Bombs   Google Washing   SEO Sabotage   Negative SEO   …and even online reputation management




  External factors have influence on a site’s rankings

  Poor attribution of duplicate content   Site owners make mistakes


  Take anything that potentially has a negative effect and use it against a third party site


  The concept of links as votes is the cornerstone of Google’s algorithm


  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


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/


  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



  As a result:

Complete case study by Danny Sullivan: http://searchengineland.com/how-prweb-helps-distribute-crap-into-google-news-sites-140597


My “click here” case study:

(the complete study: http://www.stateofsearch.com/a-click-here-case-study/)


What’s spammier?

vs


What’s spammier?

vs

A comment spammer in local SERPs Interflora


  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/


  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


 …Shitty infographic time!


(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)


Again, this is a niche specific criterion

Result? Penalty due to a negative SEO campaign


Result? Ranking in top 10 of one of the most competitive niches


  Or instead of building links, you can remove them…

  A spike of interest caused by Penguin


  Ever got one of these?


Do you see an opportunity for negative SEO here?


  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


  Davi

David Naylor’s original post ranking below sites that scraped/aggregated it


  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



  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


  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


  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


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:


  Indexable empty search results   Use of insecure plugins   Site structure causing duplicate onsite

content   Bad redirects   Etc.


  Bingo – your site is now about Viagra!


And it will get indexed…

…because…


  Sites get hacked   According to Stop Badware, the three most

common types of badware affecting sites are: ◦  Malicious scripts ◦  .htaccess redirects ◦  Hidden iframes


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/


  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



  Google Suggest



  McDonald’s asks customers to talk about their experience, promotes a hashtag

  Result:


  Burger King Twitter Account Hacked


  HMV fired employee vents on official Twitter account


  Is Negative SEO ever going to go away?


NO.


  As long as there are negative factors, they will continue to be exploited


  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


  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


  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


  Example: BBC.co.uk

How do you hijack this link profile?


  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


  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/


•  [email protected] •  Twitter: @irishwonder •  Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/irishwonder •  LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/irishwonder

Business

Negative SEO: Past, Present and Future - ThinkVis 2013