A case of negative SEO?
-
We came across today some very strange forum postings. Essentially they look like some nonsense text followed by a list of "adult" terms. In the middle of the list, completely randomly and strangely our brand terms appear in the list. There are no links to anything. The only thing I can think of is that someone is trying to make our brand terms algorithmically associated with questionable "red flag" terms in the eyes of search engines. I have no idea why else this would be happening. Could this be a case of some kind of Fiverr negative SEO attack? Is there any risk? Doesn't seem like anything we can do about it...
-
Forums that have this kind of spam, either don't have it very long (forum mods remove it), or the forum has been abandoned and so is full of spam, so therefore google knows not to take anything seriously from the forum.
It would be a bigger problem if this type of spam was on a page with some authority, (but they why waste a good backlink to your own site, to instead spam 1 of your competitors)
As long as you have some decent authority, I don't think these methods will ever do any real damage, (and if they do it will be short lived)
That's my 2 cents anyway
-
agree with wesley, if there is no associated links your probably ok, although from a brand image point of view you may wish to contact the webmaster and request the post is removed. You can normally find contact detail for genuine sites with WhoIs.
Within the SEO community there is a continuing debate as to whether negative SEO actually exisits. With this one mention your almost certainly fine, but i personally am of the opinion this very much a reality of the SEO world having experienced this first hand on multiple occasions now. But in these cases we are talking about many thousands of links built in just a few days, so again i return to my point that if this is isolated you are fine, and even then the inpact of any negaitive SEO attack will be dependant on the size of your link profile,
If you were interested to know a little more on the debate however a few useful articles to start on can be found here (From Search engine round table) and here (A whiteboard friday by Rand). Another good example to look up is when Rand issued a challange to damage his blog from negative SEO,
Anyway, off topic a little, sure you should be fine.
-
As long as there are no links to your website this should not be a problem for you. If there are links pointing to your site in these kinds of context then you should disavow the links through Google Webmaster Tools.
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
-
Is there a negative consequence of recycling guest posts?
I have an SEO campaign, where I have about ~100 target websites. I have an article on a specific topic, that is relevant to their industry and mine. The article links back to my website, and in exchange for posting the article the owner of the target website receives compensation in free services from our company. The topic is very specific to the marketing campaign and the compensation model. It is not possible for this particular campaign to create other topics for articles. If several websites host the exact same article that links to my website: Is there a negative SEO consequence for the target websites? Is there a negative SEO consequence for my website? If yes to either of these questions, just how different would the post need to be to avoid the answer being yes to either of these questions?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | deweydecibel0 -
Is there any SEO impact to using "www" vs. non-"www" preferred domain name?
My client has been using "www" with his domain and before I took over, has used it in marketing etc. I typically don't use "www" in my wordpress setup, and set non-www as the preferred domain in google analytics and google search console. Does it make any difference? Especially when www resolves to non-www? I appreciate some guidance with this.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | chill9860 -
How do I deal with Negative SEO (Spammy Links)?
For the past 12 months, our website has been hit by spammy links with annoying anchor text. We suspected one of our competitor are deploying negative SEO on us. The image is an example of the sites and anchor text we have been spammed with. The frequency is about 1 - 2 spammy links a day. I have a few questions from here onwards: Does those links affect our SEO? (Most are mainly nofollow) Other than disavow, what other stuff can I do? How will google and other search engines see this incident? TcmFsti
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Changsst0 -
Red Square SEO Backlinking Service. Does Anyone Have Any FeedBack On Them?
Ive done quite a bit of research and I'm strongly considering using a back linking service to speed up my rankings. The one I found to be the best is Red Square SEO, do any of you guys have any feedback on them? Heres their website. http://www.redsquareseo.net
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Voltron0 -
Best URL structure for SEO for Malaysian/Singapore site on .com.au domain
Hi there I know ideally i need a .my or .sg domain, however i dont have time to do this in the interim so what would be the best way to host Malaysian content on a www.domainname.com.au website? www.domainname.com.au/en-MY
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse
www.domainname.com.au/MY
domainname.com.au/malaysia
malaysia.domainname.com.au
my.domainname.com.au Im assuming this cant make the .com.au site look spammy but thought I'd ask just to be safe? Thanks in advance! 🙂0 -
What could go wrong? SEO on mobile site is different than desktop site.
We have a desktop site that has been getting worked on over the year regarding improving SEO. Since the mobile site is separate, the business decided to not spend the time to keep it updated and just turned it off. So any mobile user that finds a link to us in search engines, goes to a desktop site that is not responsive. Now that we're hearing Google is going to start incorporating mobile user friendliness into rankings, the business wants to turn the mobile site back on while we spend months making the desktop site responsive. The mobile site basically has no SEO. The title tag is uniform across the site, etc. How much will it hurt us to turn on that SEO horrid mobile site? Or how much will it hurt us to not turn it on?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Looking for recent bad SEO / black hat example such as JC Penney example from 2011
I am giving a presentation in a few weeks and looking for a "what not to do" larger brand example that made poor SEO choices to try and game Google with black hat tactics. Any examples you can point me to?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jfeitlinger0 -
How to run SEO tests you don't want to be associated with
A client has a competitor who is ranking above them for a highly competitive term they shouldn't really be able to rank for. I think I know how the site got there, and I think I can replicate it myself with a quick test, but it's definitely grey hat if not black hat to do so. I do not want my own sites and company to be damamged by the test, but i'd like to let the client know for sure, and also i'd love to know myself. The test should take about a week to run, there is no hacking involved or password stealing or anything damaging to another. How would you do such a test? I'm dubious about using my own server / site for it, but would a week really matter? Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | lethal0r0