Negative SEO

Negative SEO is an attempt to damage a competitor's search visibility from the outside. The classic method points large volumes of spam links at the competitor's website in the hope that Google reads the links as the site's own doing and responds with a penalty. The tactic belongs to the black hat toolbox and runs against Google's spam policies.

Spam links are the most common variant, and the phenomenon reaches wider: content copied onto other domains, fake reviews of the business, or in serious cases outright hacking, where hidden links or pages are planted on the domain.

The risk is smaller than the reputation suggests. Google's systems ignore spam links by default rather than penalizing the page they point at, since anything else would turn negative SEO into a cheap and effective weapon. Most attacks end with no measurable effect on rankings.

An attack does leave clear traces. In Google Search Console and backlink tools it shows up as hundreds of new links from irrelevant foreign domains, or as spikes with no campaign behind them. For the rare serious case, typically one involving a manual action, the disavow tool rejects the links in question; otherwise the filters handle it themselves.

The best defense is a strong starting point. A website with solid authority, built through patient SEO work, rarely topples from a little noise outside, and the guide to search engine guidelines marks out where Google draws its lines.