If Google truly penalizes sites for bad linking, could my competitor sabotage me?

[frankthetank2]

I am sure this has been discussed before (I am new).  I am very paranoid about upsetting Google with questionable SEO practices.  The white hat people sometimes claim that google will penalize you for bad linking, paying for links, buying social bookmarks etc.

If this is true, could my competitor do this for my site to lower my rankings?  I would never know about it until it was too late.   If they can't do this to me, then what's to stop me from doing it to my own site?

Maybe I am missing something here.

Thanks for your input.

[NakulGoyal]

You are thinking right. What would stop all the major brands to go out there and buy the "spammiest" links networks pointing to their competition. How does the competition prove they did not do it.

I think Google dealt with this years ago with the Miserable failure change.... here. They basically altered their algorithm to not give "too much" advantage of links/anchor text from all over the web. In a sense, they created the ability for their algorithm to discount the value of links, not penalize the website being linked to. Does that make sense ? I think what's happening now is not any different...they can and will continue to identify link spam, de-index link networks and manipulative techniques using pattern identification. But if not all, most cases, discount the value of those links...and not directly or not 100% penalize the site being linked to, because then technically a group of people/websites could run a mass campaign and kill any online business. That's not how the Internet is supposed to work...

[frankthetank2]

Thanks.  This is how I hoped the internet would work.

I am not advocating any link spamming or unethical practices (I already learned my lesson once from Google and they don't ever forgive) but if I understand this correctly, there is really no penalty from say, buying 1000 backlinks.  The only bad thing is that what little bit of value you might get would be short lived once big G catches on and is probably a waste of time and money in the long run.   Is that about right?

[SEOKeith]

Yeah, I heard Matt Cutts talking about this and his answer was "Google will discount those links and not count them" (or something similar to that affect) along with paid links.

I would also check out this post, this directly addresses your concern. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/lets-kill-the-%E2%80%9Cbad-inbound-links-can-get-your-site-penalized%E2%80%9D-myth/32426/

It would also depend on your current back link profile, if you have a bunch of poor quality / border line junk links and one of your competitors point a bunch or really bad links at you I can "imagine" (I don't know for sure, I have not tested this) you are going to take a hit in rankings.

Bottom line is, build good quality links and you should be golden

[JamesNorquay]

Google has recently pushed out some advice in regards to this they have the following statement:

"Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you're concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don't control the content of these pages."

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34449

[BlueprintMarketing]

I think you should be less worried about competitors actually trying to sabotage you if that does happen and I’ m not saying I know your situation or pretend to it is a very serious matter. However unfortunately for all of us it is true Google is penalizing people for using anchor text that is the same as a keyword or keyword phrase. It frankly does not look natural and Google has a way of now discovering it here is a article that is brief but explains a lot http://www.search-placement.com/new-google-algorithm-update  I think I speak for most of us  when I say “hopefully just a phase and Google will grow out of it”

The way your site has been affected which I imagine is negatively by your post would be very hard for a competitor to do in less you allowed them to have your passwords things like that where they could really sabotage your work. I am not trying to scare you however if you do believe somebody is out to get you should maybe look into a password generator and make extremely hard passwords to break. That said I myself have competitors in many fields including this one but believe most people are good and will not do something as juvenile and illegal as try to hurt the competitors website frankly I would try to make mine better if I were in that position not waste my time hurting people. However look at your analytics I hope you have Google installed at least maybe you can catch a thief. I wish you all the best and I hope this it is not Google’s attempt to make us pay per a click. Just one thing you brought up white hat SEO’s say Google will penalize you for bad linking, buying social bookmarks and paying for links. All that is true they will penalize you for that if they know you are doing it you might want to look at the amount of links you are building make it look natural go for quality before quantity if you in the past have had links built by people who even did what was considered the best practice at the time put keywords in the anchor text you may be being punished by Google for that. The way who looks at this is any manipulation of their system is bad and a posh bowl offense and a possible offense. If Google had its way people would write their own content links would only appear naturally and no one would be able to optimize their off page SEO. I do not agree with googles ideas of what we should have to do but unfortunately they make the rules. check your website for links that look out of place. I wish you the best of luck and hope that you are not really dealing with somebody stupid enough to try and hurt your site as I imagine you use this for business and that would be a crime to harm your Business.

Sincerely,

Thomas

PS I want to go on record as agreeing with the other gentlemen that have answered your question.

[Carson-Ward]

In short, don't worry about competitors hitting you with bad links unless you are using questionable link-building practices and bad content.