Possibilities of Negative Co-Citation and/or Co-Occurrence?

[Atlanta-SMO]

Knowing how co-citation and co-occurrence function, or how we speculate that they function, it seems there could be several ways that competitors could associate negative words and phrases with sites they compete with.  This could also be disastrous for reputation management.  Someone could associate negative terms about a person or business without linking to them and it could do harm.

Does this make sense?  Is this possible or are there safe-checks in place?

[Atlanta-SMO]

Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Jimmy,

Thanks for the really fun question (note: negative SEO isn't fun, but trying to figure it the algorithm is

Couple of reasons why I think this would be difficult:

1. We have very limited working knowledge of both co-citation and co-occurance. What we do know at this point is little more than theory. So working them into an actionable strategy for positive rankings would be hard enough I imagine, let alone negative SEO.

2. The signals produced by these measurements are likely to be weaker than traditional link signals, thus reducing the incentive to use them.

3. One of the reasons we believe search engines may use co-citation and co-occurance is that they are harder to game (especially when combined with authority and trust metrics) so it follows that they would also be harder to game in the negative.

That said, it's so new I barely know what I'm talking about. Really interesting area