Comments on: I Can Sabotage Your Google Ranking! Using Negative SEO?

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:03:15 +0000

Hi Kai,

I doubt how genuine the chances really are of being able to pull it off, even though to pay $3000 dollars a day for someone to do means there must be something in it.

By: Kai Lo

Kai Lo — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:12:44 +0000

I agree that it should be a crime because the site owner has no control over the person spamming links. I’m glad it is only a short-lived problem though.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:19:15 +0000

@Potatochef,

It was an interesting story but I’m not sure how much I’m going to read into it. It only really apply to the bigger sites that dominate huge niches, like travel, technology and finance. It doesn’t really apply to everyday niche bloggers, it was simply something that I found interesting.

By: PotatoChef

PotatoChef — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:48:42 +0000

There is not enough time in the day for me to do all of the “above board” things that need to be done. I wouldn’t waste my time on something like this. Besides, in the niches I blog it really is not worth it for a short term gain.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:00:16 +0000

@Manish,

Thanks for the input. Ye I am very skeptical of the whole negative SEO concept. I have seen sites penalised in the passed for having excessive inbound links from known link farms, but don’t see how simply link spamming will negatively effect a site. You could set up a program in a couple of hours that would sabotage your competitors in a weekend? Something doesn’t sound right to me.

By: Manish

Manish — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:55:47 +0000

Hi Tim, Quite researched post. However, it doesn’t seem that negative SEO might hurt a website too bad. As Google clearly stats, Google will only penalize the websites who are linking irrelevant websites on their websites rather than the websites which are being linked.

If the negative SEO concept is true then one would stop working on his own website and will work negatively on his clients websites. I personally tried the same to check the impact of negative SEO with one of my finance blog, however, I have not observed any downfall in ranking and traffic but a positive swing towards rankings.