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Negative SEO Doesn’t Work and Google Gives the Exact Reasons as to Why

August 1, 2024 /
All industries  /   Algorithm Updates 

Negative SEO is the practice of intentionally sabotaging a competitor by trying to make them appear to Google as if that competitor is spam. This is primarily done by linking low-quality websites back to the legitimate website, attempting to create an association between that business and scams, regulated industries, and other websites which search engines deprioritize. However, while these negative SEO attacks worked in the past, changes to Google’s algorithm now prevent this specific attack method.

This method of negative SEO attacks used to be an effective way for black-hat optimizers to sabotage each other. In the early teens, Google’s Penguin Update made the value of backlinks very prominent. As such, SEO experts started to focus on link quantity regardless of their quality. When Google then switched the focus to quality, black-hat optimizers began their sabotage of competitors via low-quality links. This became a common practice in the online gambling space in particular, where even temporary high rankings saw significant returns. Google has since switched its methodology for links and citations entirely, only focusing on high-quality links, with diminishing returns on their quantity, and ignoring all irrelevant low-quality links.

Negative SEO can no longer harm businesses as Google considers links from unrelated topics irrelevant. If you run a flower shop and have a sudden influx of links from low-quality online gambling websites, they are not considered for rankings. Google also focuses on matching topics from page to page. There was a time when links from non-matching topics could be used for positive or negative SEO, but Google has known for many years now to stop focusing on backlink and citation quantity. Any optimizer that promises returns based solely on links is out of the loop by about a decade. You cannot gain or lose traffic via link spam.

There are, however, other methods which modern black-hat SEO uses to manipulate rankings. If your local business has seen a massive drop in traffic, it may be due to the Google Maps Pin Exploit that was exposed just last month.