Negative SEO – Can It Really Work?

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few months or so, you’re sure to have heard about negative SEO. And we’re not talking about the kind of SEO you implement on your own website only to find it has a slightly detrimental effect – this is the kind of negative SEO that’s deliberately inflicted upon sites by malicious third-parties.A raft of emails made its way out last month and hit the mailboxes of large and small businesses all over the world. The extortionists behind the correspondence demanded large sums of money in order to avoid having the respective sites bombarded with spam SEO, which would in turn result in a slide down the SERP rankings. Given the power of Google and the way in which things like external backlinks can indeed affect a site’s ranking, it’s a thought that’s both scary and seems realistic. However, there’s still a great deal of confusion as to whether such a threat really exists, not to mention what is being done about it if there is?  Can Negative SEO Actually Work?The negative SEO threatened by those responsible for the extortion centers largely on link-building. It’s common knowledge these days that when and where a website is found to be stacking up large number of spam backlinks from sources of no value, the site as a whole can be heavily punished. As such, those behind the threats insisted that all they needed to do was create a few thousand backlinks to any site they targeted in order to see its reputation with Google and Co. fatally soiled.Google has so far been pretty reluctant to say anything overly conclusive on the subject, though has indirectly backtracked on a prior statement. There was a time quite a few years back when Google insisted that there was nothing on Earth any third party could do to harm the reputation of another site – at least as far as its SERP was concerned. Now though, Google has launched its new disavow tool which basically means that when and where a site feels it is being discredited by bad links, it can declare them as such and therefore ensure they’re not taken into account.Or in other words, they’re admitting that right now an outsider could indeed harm your site. In terms of evidence of this happening on even a remotely worrying scale however, there’s really no need to be panicking just yet.Google’s Current StanceIn terms of where Google stands on the negative SEO debate right now, all we’ve heard are somewhat vague and non-committal statements, such as how:

• Google is committed to keeping sites safe and free from harmful outside influence
• Google does all it can to detect the difference between manmade and malicious links
• Negative SEO based on backlinks is unlikely to do any real harm.

But at the same time, they also admit they don’t always get it right. And when your site suddenly falls off the rankings, what are your chances of having it reinstated by pleading your case? Have you ever tried to get a direct answer out of Google on such matters?Long story short therefore – we’re still in the dark, but the time for panic hasn’t yet arrived.