SEO

“Negative SEO” – Harming Your Competitors With SEO

The Saboteurs Of Search from Forbes has been getting some buzz from around the search industry. In short, the article interviews two SEOs about how they can potentially use “negative SEO” tactics to harm a site in Google.


The other day, I reported at Search Engine Roundtable about companies offering to do this type of work. So the Forbes article is pretty timely.

Google’s Matt Cutts is quoted in the Forbes article, confirming that it is possible to hurt a site’s ranking but says it’s unlikely: “I won’t go out on a limb and say it’s impossible.”

The article details seven ways to “sabotage” a site’s rankings in Google:

(1) Google Bowling
(2) Tattling
(3) Google Insulation
(4) Copyright Takedown Notices
(5) Copied Content
(6) Denial of Service
(7) Click Fraud

Infamous black hat SEO, Fantomaster has decided to post his own Fighting Dirty techniques. But he also shared how one can protect themselves from “negative SEO.”

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Black hat SEO Click fraud Copyright infringement Denial-of-service attack Forbes Google Google Search Matt Cutts Search engine optimization Search Engine Roundtable
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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and 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.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.