Google has explained why negative SEO doesn’t work. His insights align with what link builders have known for decades.
Understanding Negative SEO
Negative SEO is a tactic where someone tries to harm a competitor’s search rankings by creating a lot of low-quality links to their site. The goal is to make Google think the competitor is spamming, which could lead to a drop in their search rankings.
This tactic first gained attention in the online gambling industry, where the stakes for high search rankings are very high. Around the mid-2000s, I heard about this practice from someone in the gambling space.
Common Occurrence of Low-Quality Links
It’s normal for websites that rank for popular search terms to attract low-quality links. This situation became more noticeable after Google’s Penguin update, which made site owners more aware of the quality of their inbound links.
Can Negative SEO Really Harm Websites?
In an interview, Gary Illyes was asked if negative SEO, where a competitor creates thousands of spammy links, can still harm a website. Gary referred to the Penguin update and shared his experience reviewing hundreds of reported negative SEO cases. Surprisingly, he found that almost all of them were not true negative SEO cases. Out of hundreds, only one case might have been negative SEO, but even that wasn’t confirmed.
Gary explained that the fear of negative SEO is much bigger than it needs to be because Google disables an enormous number of low-quality links.
Why Negative SEO Links Don’t Affect Websites
At around the 30-minute mark of the interview, Gary revealed an important detail about how Google evaluates links. He explained that Google looks at the context of the linking site and the linked site. If they are not related, Google won’t count the link. For example, if a site about flowers gets a link from a Canadian casino selling Viagra, Google will likely ignore that link.
Google’s Topic Matching for Links
In the early days of SEO, thousands of unrelated links could boost a site’s rankings. Link builders even offered “free” widgets with hidden links to their clients’ sites. However, Google has since tightened its rules. Now, links need to be relevant to the content of both the linking and linked pages.
Gary’s explanation confirms what link builders have known for years: off-topic links don’t help and are often ignored by Google. This rare, detailed insight from a Google representative clarifies why negative SEO doesn’t work.
As a London-based Technical SEO Strategist, I've worked with top firms like BT.com, EE.co.uk, Tripadvisor, Yopa, and various digital marketing and cloud computing companies. My extensive experience in SEO, including outreach, helps me create impactful strategies informed by the latest industry trends, ensuring innovative solutions for diverse industry needs.