Negative backlinks

[darkanweb]

Hi I have heard that penguin penalizes a site for bad backlinks. Do you think that it is true? Do you think that is possible for someone to penalize my website adding my link to some spam website? I'm worried that someone could do it...

[irvingw]

Yes it's true. It takes much more than one link, it needs to be a pretty major spamming campaign against your site if you already have established backlinks. If you have a brand new site someone could do this to you easier. If you are #1 in high competition searches you become the potential target of everyone below you. Always keep a look at your backlinks for anything out of the ordinary.

[darkanweb]

thanks for your answer, what can I do in case I see those backlinks and I can't remove them? Is there any way to contact google to ask them to don't count the links? Or can I suit the person is doing this? Is it illegal ?

[ZeroWing]

I used the disavow tool to take some negative backlinks off a client's site. It was pretty easy just follow the Guidelines set by google to the letter. The client was very pissed and talking lawsuit and suing, but that is not something that I have any experience with. Apparently, it is a big deal and a federal crime because they talked to the FBI and the Feds actually listened.

Once the disavow request is approved the links are still on your backlink report, but appear with a "no follow" tag next to them. There may have been no correlation because I was doing several SEO related things for them, but the rankings did jump right after the request was approved.