Hit by Negative SEO
-
I've seen some discussion here about whether or not negative seo is real.
I've just spent 6 months recovering from Penguin, rewriting content, removing hundreds of bad links, and seeing our traffic slowly improve.
Yesterday we noticed in Google webmasters tools that we're ranking for the term "Free Sex." Here... http://screencast.com/t/ezoo2sCRXQ
Now we have discovered that thousands of "sex" links have been directed at our improving domain. I am convinced I know who the culprit is.
What would you advise a client to do in my situation?
Forget about removing these damn links. I don't have the time, money or energy to go through that again. I'm sure he can add them much faster than I can ever remove them.
Is the disavow tool best answer in this case? Or is there an international court of seo justice that I can appeal to?
-
Just a followup to this old thread for anyone working through similar issues.
We are monitoring what Google finds through their "Download Latest Links." We add the domains where the bad links are to the Disavow Links tool.
Google no longer ranks the site for any "sex" terms. No warnings have been issued to the site in 4 months. Things are stable at the moment, but we're going to be picking the lint out of this link list for a long time.
-
So send a note to the webspam team? I'm not into public shaming. I don't think these guys have any shame.
It's pretty obvious to me based on my history with a certain company. There's only about four of us in this particular niche. Lo and behold, only 3 of us were spammed ( I saw in some of the web spam that 2 other competitors were often linked to from the same page). They targeted a very specific page on my site, so that tells me clearly the keywords they are trying to knock me down for. Given this other company's history of aggressive tactics (spamming our blog posts, spamming comments on shareware sites where we are listed, spamming our ratings and simultaneously saying their product is better, building out dozens of EMD sites, etc etc), given that some of the spam was in their native language, and that I recognize some of the aliases they have used in the past, I have a pretty strong hunch I know who I'm dealing with.
My hope is that nothing happens to my serp so they won't be encouraged to keep doing it. That's the real danger I see; if it works, certainly they'll keep doing it.
-
That's an awesome idea. It wouldn't be difficult for them to algorithmically verify that your site is totally not relevant for a given query.
-
Thanks for the feedback everyone.
I spent about 5 hours yesterday picking out bad links from good, and sent them to Google through their disavow tool.
I wondered how this could happen (I guess I live in Candy Land) and it took me about 2 minutes to find people on Fiverr selling 25,000 "bad links" for $5. That's scary, and it seems Google has wrought this with Penguin. I can't work this hard everytime someone wants to spend $5.
My hope is that my site withstands the attack. So far so good, really, but it sure is annoying when you're trying hard to clean things up and do the right thing going forward.
Maybe Google should offer a Disavow Query tool, whereby you could tell it if certain queries are misdirecting traffic to your site. That way I could let them know at the front end that my site has nothing to do with "free sex."
-
Brian and IPRO both suggest that you use the disavow links tool that Google recently rolled out. That may wind up being the answer in the long run but Matt Cutts, in a recent GoogleWebmasterHelp video, seems to stress the fact that this tool should be used after exhausting other link-removal attempts.
Barry, over at seroundtable, has a straight forward write up about this on his blog and even includes a sample (quoted below) of what it is he thinks Google is looking for in a disavow action.
Here is a link to the specific article I am speaking of: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-disavow-link-tool-15848.html
I know you want a quick and relatively painless fix, but Google tends to be vague in that regard and I doubt, unfortunately, that such a fix exists in a situation like this.
*Contact those who run the sites where the links are coming from, and keep a record of your interaction with them.
*E-mail all relevant parties until you get some sort of answer, positive or negative. If you get no response make a note of that.
*Contact Google with a spam report (probably won't get a non-automated response quickly or at all), and make a note of your report submissions/
*If none of these, or other methods I am sure I must be leaving out, solve the issue, format and submit a detailed disavow file.
WIsh I could offer the silver bullet but, as far as I am aware, that bullet has yet to exist.
-
" I am convinced I know who the culprit is." I would tell a client to spend a bit of time sleuthing for evidence to corroborate that confident assertion. If you can flesh out a very strong case, I would then take it to Google spam team, and possibly talk to an attorney about sending a "we're on to you" letter. There's no criminal case, but a civil judgment need only show that they took actions that hurt you. The mere act of calling them out and threatening a suit will probably stop the abuse (well, unless you're dealing with a sociopath).
Definitely disavow the toxic links when necessary though...
-
Yeah, I'd agree with that - disavow sounds like a good bet.
-
If you're 100% sure who did it, and you're willing to put yourself out there and name-and-shame, you can do that. I'm not sure that's in your best interests, though. I would just keep a close eye on the situation and disavow aggressively.
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
-
Want to remove a large amount of links from spam sites. SEO company says we will lose a lot of link juice?
Hi, We have a lot of links that have a spam score above 30% and 60%. I don't know if someone has spammed our website. However our SEO company has said we should remove these carefully over a period of 3 months while they add new good links. I don't quite trust this advice. Are they trying to get more business?? They have put doubt in our mind. Can anyone please shed any light on this?? Thank you
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | YvonneDupree0 -
3 word brand name + SEO. Will I be losing out on organic searches with spaces?
Hello, Starting a new website and the company name has three words. We've made the decision for the brand guide that we will not have spaces when the name is included in copy. Are we going to have difficulties ranking for both instances? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jessicarechkemmer0 -
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 -
Advanced Outside Perspective Requested to Combat Negative SEO
**Situation: **We are a digital marketing agency that has been doing SEO for 6 years. For many years, we maintained exceptional rankings and online visibility.However, I suppose with great rankings comes great vulnerability. Last year, we became the target of a pretty aggressive and malicious negative SEO campaign from another other SEO(s) in our industry - I'm assuming they're competitors. Overnight, there were 10,000+ links built on various spam domains using the anchor text: negative marketing services poor seo butt crack kickass ... and more (see attached image) The issue we face are: Time Investment - Enormous investment of time and energy to contact each web admin for link removal. Hard to Keep Up - When we think we're getting somewhere, new links come out of the woodwork. Disavow Doesn't Work - Though we've tried to generally avoid the disavow tool, we've had to use it for a few domains. However, it's difficult to say how much effect, if any, it's had on the negative links. As you can imagine, we've seen an enormous drop in organic traffic since this all started. It's unfortunate that SEO has come to this point, but I still see a lot of value in what we do and hope that spammers don't completely ruin it for us one day. Moz Community - I come to you seeking some new insight, advice, similar experiences or anything else that may help! Are there any other agencies that have experienced the same issue? Any new ways to combat really aggressive negative SEO link building? Thanks everyone! UUPPplJ
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ByteLaunch0 -
Vendor Descriptions for SEO... Troublesome?
Howdy! I have been tossing this idea around in my head over the weekend and I cannot decide which answer is correct, so here I am! We a retailer of products and is currently in the midst of redesigning our site-- not only design but also content. The issue that we are facing is with product descriptions from our vendors. We are able to access the product descriptions/specs from their websites and use them on ours, but my worry is that we will get tagged for duplicate content. Other retailers (as well as the vendors) are using this content as well, so I don't want this to have an adverse effect on our ranking. There are so many products that it would be a large feat to re-write unique content-- not to mention that the majority of the rhetoric would be extremely similar. What have you seen in your experiences in similar situations? Is it bad to use the descriptions? Or do we need to bite the bullet and do our best to re-write hundreds of product descriptions? Or is there a way to use the descriptions and tag it in a way that won't have Google penalize us? I originally thought that if we have enough other unique content on our site, that it shouldn't be as big of a deal, but then I realized how much of our site's structure is our actual products. Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jpretz0 -
Negative SEO on my website with paid +1's
Hi guys, I need a piece of advice. Some scumbag played me quite well with paid +1's on my two articles and now I'm in a problem.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Fastbridge
http://sr.stateofseo.com/seo-vesti/google-implementacija-ssl-protokola-not-provided-problem/
http://sr.stateofseo.com/napredni-seo/najnovije-promene-google-panda-algoritma/
They are both translated articles (written originally by me on the same website). I've noticed those +1's (476 on both articles) when my website received a penalty for "SEO" keyword on Google.rs (Serbian Google) and I'm now on the 11th page.
Other keywords still rank just fine. Not cool, right? Now, I think there could be two solutions:
First one is to remove my inner link that's pointing to my homepage with "SEO" anchor, and hope for the best. Second one is to completely remove/delete those two articles and wait for Google to reindex the website and hopefully remove my ban. Do you guy have some other ideas how can I fix this or remove / disavow those +1 or somehow explain to the Google crew / algo that I'm just a humble SEO without any evil thoughts? 🙂 Thank you in advance.0 -
Mobile SEO best practices : Should my mobile website be located at m.domain.com or domain.com/mobile?
I'd like to know if there's any difference between using m.domain.com/pages or domain.com/mobile/pages for a mobile website? Which one is better? Why? Does Google treat the two differently? As you can see, I'm new to this! This is my first time working on a mobile website, so any links/resources would be highly appreciated. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GroupeDSI0 -
Explain To Me How Negative SEO ISNT Real?
I'm seeing lots of "offers" springing up to do negative SEO on your competitors. I know people keep insisting this sort of thing is just a bogeyman, but follow my logic here: We know the Penguin update PENALIZED, and not just devalued "over optimization." Read: exact match keyword links. We know that if your link profile is too "unnaturally" keyword heavy, (it should be majority your brand or your domain or your company name, etc) you get penalized. Again, not devalued, PENALIZED. Ok. So what is to stop a blackhatter from using one of those software bots to just kill a competitor? Knowing the above two points, lets say a website is ranking for "cool widgets". Why not just create a bunch of exact match keyword spam links for "cool widgets" targeting that website. In a while, the Penguin penalty kicks in and bammo. The thing that scares me about the post Penguin landscape is that google has specifically named an activity ("over optimization") that will get you PENALIZED. So, don't do that, right? Except, that means they've explicitly outlined an activity that will be penalized, and is easy for others to do to you, and that you would be powerless to prevent. I await the usual "this is an age old worry that has never come true" replies. But if you reply that way, ask yourself, can you refute the logic of the points above? And also... oh no... It's happening. I'm seeing it.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brianmcc1