What can you do about negative SEO?

[TomRayner]

Negative SEO may not be technically illegal - but extortion is.

What you have described there looks like extortion to me.  240 sites built to link to you, verifiable whois information, contacted the culprit, he has requested money from you to remove the links he built.  That's extortion - and you have it in writing.

It might not be the most solid legal case, but it can be enough to scare off any disgruntled webmaster who is doing this.  If you have anyone who can draft a legal letter to serve, I'd get on this.  It should put a stop to it.

However, as Jonathan says, it is unlikely that this kind of negative SEO will have any sort of impact, particularly if you have disavowed the links.  When uploading a disavow file, I'd also put a "# comment" in there saying that this is because of a negative SEO attack.  240 identical sites and links from the same whois (and probably IP) - Google is going to know this is a negative SEO attack on you and will discount those links.

But I'd scare that bastard into submission if I were you.

[LinkWheelOldSchool]

Did your rankings drop? How old is your domain and what DA/PA do you have? How many links do you have (checked with all available tools)?

3000 links won't do much, that's not really negative seo, 300k links would be something to worry about. So unless your rankings dropped or your site is brand new, all should be ok.

Also, disavowing is not instant, not even fast, might take up to 2 (or more) months to see some effect.

[TheWebMastercom]

Yes, at the top of my disavow file, I also mentioned about the negative SEO attack.  In my case it was obvious from the anchor text used on all the backlinks.  I don't think they even look at the disavow file unless it is with a manual penalty, but I did add the comments anyway.

[AndyB_UK]

Ye I think I will draft up a legal document to send to him. He has really rattled my cage with his responses.

The issue I have isn't so much the links because I know Google (should) will know it's negative SEO. It's just that our anchor text is now 50% "table tennis tables" which comes from all his sites. Correct me if I'm wrong but disavowing will simply tell Google not to count those links but will my anchor text still be negative in Googles eyes because technically the links are still there?

I will be drafting a legal letter today and sending it to him. He is an absolute joke, people like him really annoy me.

His "official" site and all the spammy ones have the same IP, email, number, location how can he possibly deny it... rant over. Thanks for the reply!

[AndyB_UK]

It totally depends on how many links you have to start with though? His 3000 links is treble what our official links are. Makes our anchor text 50% of the keyword he has targeted and just messes up our reports.

[AndyB_UK]

He's an absolute idiot.

Demanded 5$ a link removal, I phoned him then he said he never sent such an email. I sent him a screenshot of the email then he starts denying the links are his etc.

I hate people who build a business on such negativity. He claims it's not him after I make it clear I won't be spending a penny on link removals from him.

[Keszi]

It was the same in our case. Could do nothing more, then just disavow him.

Unfortunately there are people who fall in his trap, and pay for the removal.

His websites are not indexed in Google. Therefore I hope Google doesn't count any links/anchor from his sites.

[LinkWheelOldSchool]

If your site has enough authority and trust (site age is also a factor here), those 3k links won't hurt a bit, no matter how many links you have. I have done experiments and a domain with 50DA/50PA and less than 100 links did not move at all after getting hit with 250k spammy links (from spammy websites - using a spammy link profile). In fact the site increased in the serps for a few keywords after about 1 month and stayed there (currently in the top 3). We did the same experiment on a high DA domain with only 8 links - nothing bad happened, rankings increased in 2-3 months.

Just think about it this way, if negative seo would be that easy to pull off, all the shady Kumars out there would start doing this. Fortunately, it's not about the links, their number or quality. Unfortunately, neg seo exists and google can't do much about it (but average Kumars don't have access to neg seo that truly works).

So if you didn't see any drop in rankings, or message in GWT saying that you have a partial penalty, there's nothing to worry about.

[AndyB_UK]

Thanks for the detailed response, appreciate it!

We have disavowed them so hoping they won't do us any harm in the future. It's reassuring to know you've done a study like that. Very interesting.

I will still proceed to send him a legal document out of principle, he needs to be shaken up a bit.

thanks again

[TomRayner]

I obviously can't say for sure regarding the anchor text - however:

My understanding is that the anchor text ratio is more a signal rather than a trigger - as in it must be one of (X) amount of signals to then fire a penalty trigger (algorithmic/manual review).

So even if it was still sending a bad 'signal' as it were, it wouldn't be the final nail in the coffin.

Of course, this is my opinion, but it's based on my experience and a bit of testing with some spam sites.

[MarieHaynes]

I see these directory links all the time when doing link audits.  While I always disavow them, my gut instinct is that Google is able to recognize that these are not self made links and as such, ignore them.

I would never recommend paying the money to remove them  but I know several people who have.

**We have disavowed them but the anchor text % is still affecting us. **

How do you know that these links are affecting you?  If you're seeing a drop in rankings I'd be looking for other possible reasons for the drop.

[TheWebMastercom]

Personally I wouldn't waste your time.  Disavow and move on.  I have had no issues with this approach.

[AndyB_UK]

Hi Marie,

Thanks for the reply. Sorry, let me re-phrase. Its affecting our reports in terms of anchor text %.

At the moment we have not been hit due to it but it would be far easier for us to have accurate reports on our anchor text %. These spammy links have distorted the analytics a lot if that makes sense.

We have disavowed them and hoping we can carry on as if they are not there.

[MarieHaynes]

Ah, I understand.  Unfortunately there's really nothing you can do to fix that problem other than paying for link removal...which I really would not recommend.

[EGOL]

If you pay them, then they put you on their second network of sites.