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Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

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Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#141

Post by pgrote »

lingben wrote: post #137
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #123

Note: this article is over a year old. The article makes it sound as if this is some new pronouncement, but it's really not. I've been using the language mentioned in this article since 2010, at least: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/calling-for-link-spam-reports/... where I said "we’ve said in the past that we work very hard to prevent competitor A from hurting competitor B." The change on the official guidelines come…

Matt, no amount of hand-waving will convince people when there is ample evidence of negative SEO, including meticulous case studies published online. As well, the very fact that Google has given in and introduced the disavow tool, it is incontrovertible proof that negative SEO is effective. Google had a good run but you have not been able to keep up with those who have striven day and night to beat your algos. The qu…

Your comment really resonates with me.

Where you rank, why you rank, etc. with Google is never explained. This used to be effective in the old days, but they have lost the edge. Instead of focusing on providing excellent search results, Google has focused on trying to draw in all parts of the internet to personalize search. This is where I think Google has lost the focus on quality.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#142

Post by makomk »

arbuge wrote: post #6

The PageRank algorithm seems broken to me. If spam links count for negative value you get competitors doing negative seo by buying cheap bad links to competing websites in bulk via places like fiverr. If they count for zero value then you get webmasters trying their luck by buying the same stuff themselves - who knows, there could be a good link amongst all the bad stuff and no harm in trying... Something other than…

This would have been disasterous earlier in Google's life, but at this point they're so dominant that they can basically force everyone else to deal with their screw-ups.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#143

Post by leephillips »

jlgreco wrote: post #140
nhebb wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I know. I guess we're supposed to be thankful for being able to submit a single file, though. I also noticed that the help page states " (the file type must be .txt and it must be encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII) ". How many non-technical people even know what that means?

How many websites that are concerned with SEO cannot find somebody who can know what that means for them? And what are the chances that if somebody doesn't know what that means they will mess it up? It is not like UTF-8/ASCII is something that you have to go out of your way to choose.. it is going to be what is defaulted to.

What if you've never heard of SEO but are being attacked by competitors planting spam links, taking advantage of Google's broken algorithms?

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#144

Post by Dylan16807 »

austenallred wrote: post #45
shawnz wrote: post #15

It's not Google's job to make sure every webmaster has a "fair shot" at rankings. It's their job to make sure the best results appear when I search for something. In Google's eyes, having false negatives is worth not having false positives, and that's just the reality of the web. Besides, it seems to me that these "problems" are only really thought of as problems by the type of people who put "search engine" in the t…

Nonsense; that is Google's one and only job. My parents run a small e-commerce business that has supported them for years; a team of a dozen people run everything from the little website to the shipping. All of their sales come from (mostly accidental) SEO and Amazon. The scary reality is that right now that entire operation could be destroyed by a competitor in a couple minutes if they knew how. It's not hard to fin…

Google's job is not to be fair. Google's job is to have good results. If they really wanted to, they could have 99% perfect results, and deliberately screw over companies the other 1% of the time, and they would still be doing their job.

Do I want a fair search engine? Yes I do. Does a search engine have to be fair to have good results? Not at all.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#145

Post by mattezell »

jacquesm wrote: post #132
mattezell wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I got you... So you were stating your personal opinion on back-links, rather than stating a factual observation about organic back-links being similar to unicorns... You're stance definitely makes more sense as an opinion - unlike factual statements, opinions afford space for both fact and fallacy (i.e. "it is either organic or you're building links.")... When stating things in a matter of fact manner ("...There…

The confusion is in your head, but I doubt I'm going to dispel it. Google managed to improve over altavista because it used something that wasn't abused by spammers yet: links. As soon as spammers (like you) realized that they could game the system once again and reduce search to a game of who most effectively manages to spoil the soup by introducing untold billions of meaningless backlinks into the game page-rank's…

Pardon me, Jacques, but why is that you are now resorting to baseless and unfounded personal attacks against me (aside from the obvious: "When your argument is shown to be invalid: 1)resort to name calling in order to confuse the topic 2) _____ 3)PROFIT!!!")?

"Spammers like me"? I've never used this tactic nor ANY other 'blackhat' SEO tactic - please check your facts (I know, I know... I've gathered thus far that this task may prove to be a difficult exercise for you - flying off the cuff and making unfounded accusations is far easier)...

I did however provide an anecdotal account of someone that I knew that had used this tactic - which I characterized as 'inexperienced' and as a 'lapse in judgement'... Furthermore, not that it really matters in the court of Jacques, I did voice concerns to the team when I learned this approach was being considered by a team lead.

I do believe that this practice is bad for the web and that any site proven to have used it should be hit in their SEO ranking.

This said, I am not confused on any of the points that you or I have made... I do however believe that you are correct on one point - you are likely incapable of dispelling anything currently present in my head on this topic... From our interaction here, I have gathered that your intent isn't to further discussion, to clarify a confused point or to factually correct an incorrectly stated claim - in short, your intent would merely appear to be 'trolling'. So... Congratulations on your success! You win the trolling Internets!

Let us recall this failed attempt at rational discourse - I provided a cautionary tale which related to the original post. You decided that it was your job as keeper of the interwebs to correct a statement that I had made - a statement which was already correct and so did not merit correction. When confronted with the reality that no correction was needed, instead of conceding or clarifying any confused points, you decided to continue to argue against a point which was never made ("derp. I don't care what you call it, even if you do use the common and widely accepted vernacular, I am right and you are a stoopidhead spamming me!") - moving away from the corrective form of your first comment to an opinion-based prose in your 2nd (using the correct conversational form finally, though still largely failing to make any valid or related points)... And finally, when all else failed, you resorted to a personal and baseless attack against me in calling me a spammer...

Jacques, I really do hope that you have a wonderful day... and I do hope that you are able to find that bug - just a hint, I don't think it's in your code... it's possible that it's of the posterior variety...

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#146

Post by jacquesm »

mattezell wrote: post #145
jacquesm wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The confusion is in your head, but I doubt I'm going to dispel it. Google managed to improve over altavista because it used something that wasn't abused by spammers yet: links. As soon as spammers (like you) realized that they could game the system once again and reduce search to a game of who most effectively manages to spoil the soup by introducing untold billions of meaningless backlinks into the game page-rank's…

Pardon me, Jacques, but why is that you are now resorting to baseless and unfounded personal attacks against me (aside from the obvious: "When your argument is shown to be invalid: 1)resort to name calling in order to confuse the topic 2) _____ 3)PROFIT!!!")? "Spammers like me"? I've never used this tactic nor ANY other 'blackhat' SEO tactic - please check your facts (I know, I know... I've gathered thus far that thi…

Anecdotes about spammers abound, nobody actually spams, go figure. But lots of people talk about their spammer friends and accidents and defend spamming practices but of course they'd never think of spamming themselves.

Let me know which company would let a junior team member spend any money at all, let alone on buying link spam in the name of the company without some higher up ok'ing it.

" I, along with countless others (http://goo.gl/W1P69), have just been ignorantly using a fictional term that nicely summarizes the concept that we are trying to convey - i.e. "the building up of back-links via non-automated, traditional routes - such as those stemming from legitimate interations with other businesses and clients""

Strongly suggests you do more than just talk about it, it sounds like typical SEO marketing drivel.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#147

Post by jlgreco »

leephillips wrote: post #143
jlgreco wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many websites that are concerned with SEO cannot find somebody who can know what that means for them? And what are the chances that if somebody doesn't know what that means they will mess it up? It is not like UTF-8/ASCII is something that you have to go out of your way to choose.. it is going to be what is defaulted to.

What if you've never heard of SEO but are being attacked by competitors planting spam links, taking advantage of Google's broken algorithms?

Whether or not they have heard the term before, I think that people who care about their website's google results and don't know how they could possibly find someone to help them make a text file are a minority not really worth worrying about.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#148

Post by Matt_Cutts »

lingben wrote: post #137
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #123

Note: this article is over a year old. The article makes it sound as if this is some new pronouncement, but it's really not. I've been using the language mentioned in this article since 2010, at least: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/calling-for-link-spam-reports/... where I said "we’ve said in the past that we work very hard to prevent competitor A from hurting competitor B." The change on the official guidelines come…

Matt, no amount of hand-waving will convince people when there is ample evidence of negative SEO, including meticulous case studies published online. As well, the very fact that Google has given in and introduced the disavow tool, it is incontrovertible proof that negative SEO is effective. Google had a good run but you have not been able to keep up with those who have striven day and night to beat your algos. The qu…

We've looked into most of the blog posts about negative SEO, and in most cases we've found major flaws or bad assumptions. Kind of like this guy was convinced that authorship caused his traffic to go down by 90%: http://www.jitbit.com/news/183-how-google-authorship-decreas... except that wasn't the case: http://aberrant.me/no-google-authorship-didnt-decrease-your-...

The disavow tool is not "incontrovertible proof" that negative SEO is effective. We introduced the disavow tool for people who had trouble cleaning up their own spammy/bad linkbuilding and weren't able to get every bad link removed from the web before doing reconsideration requests. Please go back to read our original announcement at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-new-too... to confirm that was the primary purpose.

By the way lingben, I just took one of the most passed-around examples where someone claimed that negative SEO worked and debunked that blog post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5815658

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#149

Post by TomAnthony »

pgrote wrote: post #141
lingben wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt, no amount of hand-waving will convince people when there is ample evidence of negative SEO, including meticulous case studies published online. As well, the very fact that Google has given in and introduced the disavow tool, it is incontrovertible proof that negative SEO is effective. Google had a good run but you have not been able to keep up with those who have striven day and night to beat your algos. The qu…

Your comment really resonates with me. Where you rank, why you rank, etc. with Google is never explained. This used to be effective in the old days, but they have lost the edge. Instead of focusing on providing excellent search results, Google has focused on trying to draw in all parts of the internet to personalize search. This is where I think Google has lost the focus on quality.

I would disagree. We have to remember that the size of the web has changed by an order of magnitude since Google first launched. Doing a good job of web search has become proportionally as difficult. Furthermore, we all interact with search engines far more than we used to, and I think we have a tendency not to notice the searches we do that are immediate and effective and focus on those that are imperfect.

I work full time in SEO, and so I don't say any of this lightly. I have a lot of problems with the way Google sometimes does things, and I see a lot of imperfect results. However, it certainly isn't fair to say they "used to be effective in the old days" with the implication they aren't effective any more. They absolutely are effective, and are certainly more effective than the competition.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#150

Post by TomAnthony »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #148
lingben wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt, no amount of hand-waving will convince people when there is ample evidence of negative SEO, including meticulous case studies published online. As well, the very fact that Google has given in and introduced the disavow tool, it is incontrovertible proof that negative SEO is effective. Google had a good run but you have not been able to keep up with those who have striven day and night to beat your algos. The qu…

We've looked into most of the blog posts about negative SEO, and in most cases we've found major flaws or bad assumptions. Kind of like this guy was convinced that authorship caused his traffic to go down by 90%: http://www.jitbit.com/news/183-how-google-authorship-decreas... except that wasn't the case: http://aberrant.me/no-google-authorship-didnt-decrease-your-... The disavow tool is not "incontrovertible proof" t…

Matt - thanks for jumping in the comments.

Can you confirm that the disavow tool is automatic? Or do people need to file a reconsideration request? Is the answer different depending on whether there is a manual penalty or an algorithmic decrease in rank/trust?

I ask because you recommended it for people who are concerned about potential negative SEO, and I'm want to be clear on how that works. I think there is certainly a perception that a reconsideration request is some sort of admission of guilt, and I can imagine people being reticent to file one if they weren't responsible for the links in question.

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