Google’s New Stance On Negative SEO: “Works Hard To Prevent” It

Google’s admitted the possibility of “negative SEO” for years. But in the wake of the Penguin Update, some have claimed it’s now easier than ever. Does a new change by Google in its help pages acknowledge this? Google’s admitted the possibility of negative SEO since at least 2007. On its help page, it previously had […]

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Google’s admitted the possibility of “negative SEO” for years. But in the wake of the Penguin Update, some have claimed it’s now easier than ever. Does a new change by Google in its help pages acknowledge this?

Google’s admitted the possibility of negative SEO since at least 2007. On its help page, it previously had said this about “negative SEO,” a term used to describe a way a competitor might harm another site:

There’s almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don’t control the content of these pages.

Now the page says:

Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don’t control the content of these pages.

Google changed the language a few months ago around March 14th according to Shaun Anderson. This pre-dates the Penguin launch, which may validate that the update of this text does not prove that Penguin makes it “easier than ever” to use “negative SEO” techniques than before.

The page does say it was updated on May 22nd but the only change made on May 22nd was the addition of the video added to the top of the page. The video talks about “What should I do if my competitors are using webspam techniques?”

This video was published to the public about a week ago, about the same time when it was added to this help page.

The other content changes to the page were done on or before March 14, 2012.

All it may say is that Google is more likely to admit these techniques are indeed possible.

Image credit to ShutterStock


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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