Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Negative SEO - Case Studies Prove Results. De-rank your competitors
-
Reading these two articles made me feel sick. People are actually offering a service to de-rank a website.
I could have swore I heard Matt Cutts say this was not possible, well the results are in.
This really opens up a whole new can of worms for google.
http://trafficplanet.com/topic/2369-case-study-negative-seo-results/
http://trafficplanet.com/topic/2372-successful-negative-seo-case-study/
This is only going to get worse as news like this will spread like wildfire. In one sense, its good these people have done this to prove it to google its just a pity they did it on real business's that rely on traffic.
-
Yeah I know, I read the full forum thread... Im not sure what you mean?
Edit: Do you mean your post was not about the actual site it effected but more about Negative SEO? If so, we understand that, thats why we said it was scary. We were just pointing out the other issues in the forum thread.
-
Its nothing got to do with the site in question. Its purely negative SEO. Read the case study about "Dan Thies" who says he is the SEO to Gurus and knows Matt Cutts on a personal basis. They targeted his website and got it off the ranks in about 1 week. He was ranked page 1 for "SEO" and "SEO services" now he is nowhere to be found.
-
Oh absolutely, the backlinks generated from the story will make it worthwhile. Not sure if it was intended but it will benefit the site in the long run Im sure. Also, they did state a few times that his website was non-profit so it certainly wont hurt his lifestyle.
Yeah I think that thread will be closely watched by big G... Probably not something to boast about on an online forum. However, he definitely knows his stuff so fair play to him - he has thought about it in great detail.
-
On reflection, this is the kind of story that is going to gain some momentum in the business/marketing world and will probably generate a bucket load of nice authority links for the site...could this be a double bluff?
either way mr negativeseo might have undone all his hard work simply by boasting about his exploits! I hope so.
-
Definitely. I think that example was way OTT and not needed for most websites. I think it looks like it would be pretty easy for small businesses with smaller websites.
Unfortunately there seems to be plenty of to55ers around. It worry's me that some people have no remorse... It could mean jobs lots and life's destroyed! Shame on Google!
-
Agreed Matt, that is scarey. though a years worth of work to deindex one competitor seems like a lot of hard work for little gain.
I'd rather spend the year doing something positive and not being a complete git.
After looking over the site in question, it may not be down to the negative SEO, theres an awful lot that could be improved on that site.
-
Scary stuff indeed...
I don't care how effective it may or may not be, I could never do this to a competitor... My motto would always be to beat them on merit and not cheating.
I have no doubt that this currently works but I also have no doubt that Google will close the loophole and instead of devaluing a website for "un-natural links" it will simply ignore the links - it is only a matter of time.
Lets cross our fingers that we don't have immoral competitors until that time comes.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Inbound links to internal search with pharma spam anchor text. Negative seo attack
Suddenly in October I had a spike on inbound links from forums and spams sites. Each one had setup hundreds of links. The links goes to WordPress internal search. Example: mysite.com/es/?s=⚄
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Arlinaite470 -
Negative SEO - Spammy Backlinks By Competitor
Hi Everyone, Someone has generated more than 22k spam backlinks (on bad keywords) for my domain.Will it hurt on my website (SEO Ranking)? Because it is already in the top ranking. How could I remove all the spammy backlinks? How could I know particular competitior who have done this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Is domain redirection a good method for SEO?
I have a question and need suggestion from you guys. I’ve searched for my question on Google but don’t get exact information what I need. Maybe I can’t search perfectly.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kamishah
Let me explain my confusion:
I’ve checked backlink profile of a website. He is not using his main domain while doing comment backlink. He put his another domain while doing comment backlink. The another domain redirect to the main domain. Why he use another domain while doing comment backlink?
Is it helpful to get better rank on Google? For example: My Main Domain = solutionfall.com
Another Domain= xyz.com (It redirect to solutionfall.com)
He just uses xyz.com while doing comment backlink. Thank You so much1 -
Excluding Googlebot From AB Test - Acceptable Sample Size To Negate Cloaking Risk?
My company uses a proprietary AB testing platform. We are testing out an entirely new experience on our product pages, but it is not optimized for SEO. The testing framework will not show the challenger recipe to search bots. With that being said, to avoid any risks of cloaking, what is an acceptable sample size (or percentage) of traffic to funnel into this test?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edmundsseo0 -
Does type of hosting affect SEO rankings?
Hello, I was wondering if hosting on shared, versus VPS, versus dedicated ... matter at all in terms of the rankings of Web sites ... given that all other factors would be exactly equal. I know this is a big question with many variables, but mainly I am wondering if, for example, it is more the risk of resource usage which may take a site down if too much traffic and therefore make it un-crawlable if it happens at the moment that a bot is trying to index the site (factoring out the UX of a downed site). Any and all comments are greatly appreciated! Best regards,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | uworlds
Mark0 -
Negative SEO Click Bot Lowering My CTR?
I am questioning whether one of our competitors is using a click bot to do negative SEO on our CTR for our industry's main term. Is there any way to detect this activity? Background: We've previously been hit by DoS attacks from this competitor, so I'm sure their ethics/morals wouldn't prevent them from doing negative SEO. We sell an insurance product that is only offered through broker networks (insurance agents) not directly by the insurance carriers themselves. However, our suspect competitor (another agency) and insurance carriers are the only ones who rank on the 1st page for our biggest term. I don't think the carrier sites would do very well since they don't even sell the product directly (they have pages w/ info only) Our site and one other agency site pops onto the bottom of page one periodically, only to be bumped back to page 2. I fear they are using a click bot that continuously bounces us out of page 1...then we do well relatively to the other pages on page 2 and naturally earn our way back to page 1, only to be pushed back to page 2 by the negative click seo...is my theory. Is there anything I can do to research whether my theory is right or if I'm just being paranoid?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheDude0 -
Would having a + plus sign between keywords in meta title have an effect on SEO?
I have seen one of my clients' competitors do this in their meta title and it got me a little intrigued... I understand that google uses the + sign as an operator in adwords, and to a certain extent, as a search tool, but would it help or make any difference to the SEO in the meta title/data (eg. 'SEO+Marketing+Services')? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | LexisClick10 -
Interesting case of IP-wide Google Penalty, what is the most likely cause?
Dear SEOMOZ Community, Our portfolio of around 15 internationalized web pages has received a significant, as it seems IP-wide, Google penalty starting November 2010 and have yet to recover from it. We have undergone many measure to lift the penalty including reconsideration requests wo/ luck and am now hoping the SEOMoz community can give us some further tips. We are very interested in the community's help and judgement what else we can try to uplift the penalty. As quick background information, The sites in question offers sports results data and is translated for several languages. Each market, equals language, has its own tld domain using the central keyword, e.g. <keyword_spanish>.es <keyword_german>.de <keyword_us>.com</keyword_us></keyword_german></keyword_spanish> The content is highly targeted around the market, which means there are no duplicate content pages across the domains, all copy is translated, content reprioritized etc. however the core results content in the body of the pages obviously needs to stay to 80% the same A SEO agency of ours has been using semi-automated LinkBuilding tools in mid of 2010 to acquire link partnerships There are some promotional one-way links to sports-betting and casino positioned on the page The external linking structure of the pages is very keyword and main-page focused, i.e. 90% of the external links link to the front page with one particular keyword All sites have a strong domain authority and have been running under the same owner for over 5 years As mentioned, we have experienced dramatic ranking losses across all our properties starting in November 2010. The applied penalties are indisputable given that rankings dropped for the main keywords in local Google search engines from position 3 to position 350 after the sites have been ranked in the top 10 for over 5 years. A screenshot of the ranking history for one particular domain is attached. The same behavior can be observed across domains. Our questions are: Is there something like an IP specific Google penalty that can apply to web properties across an IP or can we assume Google just picked all pages registered at Google Webmaster? What is the most likely cause for our penalty given the background information? Given the drops started already in November 2010 we doubt that the Panda updates had any correlation t this issue? What are the best ways to resolve our issues at this point? We have significant history data available such as tracking records etc. Our actions so far were reducing external links, on page links, and C-class internal links Are there any other factors/metrics we should look at to help troubleshooting the penalties? After all this time wo/ resolution, should we be moving on two new domains and forwarding all content as 301s to the new pages? Are the things we need to try first? Any help is greatly appreciated. SEOMoz rocks. /T cxK29.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tomypro0