SEO and Negative SEO are just opposite sides of the same coin
The question isn’t, “Is Negative SEO real in 2025?” — the real question is, “Is Your Ranking Permanent?”
If not, there could be a reason behind it. Either you’re making SEO mistakes, or a competitor is trying to outrank you through Negative SEO.
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NEGATIVE SEO ATTACK : Protect Your Website Before Its too Late
SEO is a never-Ending Battle. Everyone Want to rank at top but google can only place 10 pages on its first page, and there is a saying that “the best place to hide a dead body is the second page of google”
To place the best website on the first page of google ecosystem, google has set some rules and guideline to optimize a website to get better ranking. If your Site follow these guidelines then you have high changes to get at the top place, if you do some mistake or try to manipulate the ranking without following the guideline, google Give a penalty. Here The Battle began. The negative SEO battle. If google consider websites are trying to manipulate the ranking through spamming or white hat seo tactics, google simple filter these websites and drop them from the first page result. And the competitors take the advantage of that.
If there is no Competitors, then it’s easy to get the first place and some people are disparately seeking for the opportunities. Either Doing Whitehat SEO for their website or Negative SEO to Competitors. “Everything is fair in love and war”
WHAT IS NEGATIVE SEO EXACTLY?
Negative SEO (E.K.A, adverse SEO/ Google Bowling) Is the Opposite of Whitehat/Ethical SEO. SEO is a set of activities, or guideline followed by a webmaster, aimed to rank higher in google search engine. On the other hand, Negative SEO is a set of activities or Tactics applied to a specific website to ruin its ranking from google search engine. The main purpose of these activities is to outrank a website from google to take the competitive advantage. There are several Tactics Applied to make a negative SEO attack successful, such as Building Spam or Unnatural Backlinks, Content Duplication, Spinning and distribution through PBN or Web 2.0 sites, Building Backlinks from adult/gambling website, DDoss attack or even Hacking a website. There are 33 possible Negative SEO attacks I have Identified so far.
Here is the clear View of Positive/Whitehat SEO vs Blackhat/Negative SEO
| Aspect | White Hat SEO | Negative SEO |
| Goal | Main Goal Is to increase Ranking and visibility to Google search Engine. | Goal Is to Outrank websites from google, specially the competitor’s Website to take the competitive advantage |
| Approach | Applying Ethical Approach’s. Followed by Guideline Provided by google Algorithm | Applying All Possible Unethical, Spam and Blackhat Approaches that docent comply the google Guideline. |
| Techniques | – Publishing High Quality Informative Articles. – Building Links naturally from relevant Niche – On-page optimization – Site speed, User experiences and Mobile & UX improvements, | – Unnatural Link building (from PBN, Forum, Web 2.0 etc.) – Content Duplication, Spinning and distribution – Write Fake Revies – Hacking or DoS attacks or malware Injection |
| Result | Increase Visibility and Ranking | Lose ranking and Visibility or Even Getting Penalised |
| Examples of Tools Used | Google Search Console, Yoast SEO, SEMrush, Ahrefs | Black-hat SEO tools, like GSA Ser, Xrumer, Money robot, SenukeTNG, SpinBot, Wp-robot Etc |
Why People Do Negative SEO?
The Answers is straight forward, to take Competitive Advantage. If there is no Competitors, then a single person/website get all the advantages. Sometimes Negative seo attack is done by website to outrank a website that sped false news about a specific brand.
Is Negative SEO still a thing in 2025?
The answers is Yes. 2025 is nothing special, so there is No way to ignore Negative SEO attack.
In-fact things are more instances. Google is updating its algorithm (Google Updated Spam and Core algorithm on December 2024 which ultimately rolled over on February 2025, and another Core updated on march 2025. You can check all algorithm Update History here : (All incidents reported for Ranking ) over and over again to filter spammy website and put the best websites at the top of its search page result.
Google follows some Ranking Factors to Maintain Search Quality Ecosystem. If you comply with the factors, you will sustain otherwise Google will kick you Out of its Search Ecosystem and Some unethical webmasters or competitors are taking advantage of it. It’s Not Always the Negative SEO attack that cause you getting a penalty, but your own SEO mistake might be the reason too.
NEGATIVE SEO ATTACK
Here are the #33 Types Of Negative SEO Atttacks I have Idientified so far.
Link-Based Negative SEO Attacks
Nuke with Spammy backlink
Anchor Text Toxification
Link farming
PBN Backlink Attack
Fake Link Removal Requests
https Redirect (With Expired domains)
Insert Hidden Links
Content-Based Negative SEO Attacks
Content Scraping and Duplication
Fake DMCA Takedown Requests
Gibberish or Spammy Content Injectio
Creating Doorway Pages
Keyword Manipulation /Stuffing
Hidden Content Creating
Fake Content Promotion
Content Spinning
Creating Doorway Pages
Page Redirecting
Technical Negative SEO Attacks
Website Hacking
Server Downtime Attacks (DDoS Attack)
Malware or Virus Injection
Forced Crawl Requests
De-indexing Via Robots.txt
Altering Meta Tag (Noindex)
Altering Canonical Tag
User Engagement / Local SEO Attacks
CTR Manipulation (Bot Attack to Reduce CTR)
High bounce rate attacks
Negative Reviews
Flooding With Irrelevant Traffic
Creating Multiple Fake Profile
Citation Poisoning
User Profile Acquisition
Changing Business Details
Smear campaigns
If you’re searching for negative SEO attacks, it likely means you’ve experienced a sudden drop in rankings, been a victim of malicious tactics, or you’re struggling to get your website to rank.
Check The Screenshot at Right 👉 →. It Dropped from Page 1 to Page 3, and lost almost 95% of organic Traffic Because of Bulk Spam Links Attack done by competitor. (I have more list who lost their ranking recently because of either SEO Mistake or Negative SEO attack.
There are thousands of Websites drop their ranking (Without even a negative SEO attack) for some reasons. It might be SEO mistake, Buying Links, keywords stuffing, etc etc. SO why Negative SEO aint be a thing???
“NEGATIVE SEO IS A REAL THING. AND ITS BECOME INTANCE THEN BEFORE DUE TO GOOGLE ALGORITHM UPDATE.”
Google is continually Updating its algorithm to filter the best website. You might Notice that there are lots of website lose their rank because of SEO mistake. Now Assume your competitors targeted your website and applying some Black-hat or Spam SEO Tactics which will result in getting penalized
As Long as google Algorithm Exist, Negative SEO will exist. There is no escape from it. You can just do it a prevent/protect your website before it too late.
NEGATIVE SEO ATTACK ILEEGAL?
THE STRAIGHT ANSWER IS “NO”
Negative SEO attack (Except Hacking) is not Considered As illegal Activities and there is no Legal consequences. Neg Seo is Unethical and people who tend to do it doesn’t care about ethics.
#33 Types of Negative SEO Attacks
I am Working as a Freelance Seo expert Since 2009. I have seen a lots of ups and down over years.
Still Now i have figured out #33 types of Negative SEO attack can be done to ruin a website’s Ranking. I will explain one by one about how they are done, how to prevent/protect or Recover from them.
1. Nuke with Spammy backlink
Building Spammy Links is the most used negative SEO tactic. It’s the most common and easiest way to target a website. There are Lots of SEO automation tools that can get the job done. Tools like GSA SER and money robots are used to create thousands of unnatural Backlinks overnight. These tools are very cheap, and they can build links from Web 2.0, blog comments, Profile links, exploit backlinks, Macro blogging, forum spamming, URL shortening, redirects, and more.
In 2012, Google Introduced “Google Penguin” Algorithm, specially designed to filter websites that build spammy links. In 2016, Penguin 4.0 was updated and Google announced that “Penguin is now part of our core algorithm”
These kinds of links are strictly against Google policy (Spam Links Policy). Google has mentioned that involvement in building low-quality links, involvement in link exchange, or buying links are against Google Terms. If you Intentionally Build this kind of link to manipulate Search Engine Ranking, then you will end up getting penalized (Algorithm penalized)
Spammers or Competitors are taking advantage of Google’s “Link Spam Policy” to create thousands of Spammy links pointed to their targeted websites to ruin their ranking. There are lots of link-building experts on the different marketplaces who offer thousands of Spammy links for a few bucks.
How to Protect Against Neg SEO Link Spam Attack
At SERP Conf. 2024 in Sofia, Bulgaria, Google Search team analyst ‘Gary Illyes” Addressed that, Google’s Advance Algorithm Can detect “links spam attack” aimed to ruin competitors’ ranks, therefore these tactics are ineffective, and spam links will be ignored automatically. So, there is nothing to worry about.
Source: searchenginejournal , Youtube
Here is another scenario: On the Google Support Forum, Some of the Website Owner claimed that they lost ranking and Organic Traffic because of Spam link attack
Some Webmasters on the Reddit Forum Also claimed that they got hit after a Google spam update on December 2024 (which is ultimately rolled out on Feb 2025)
Let’s consider that Google is ignoring Link spam attacks but still, there is a change that competitors use different link-building approaches (such as PBN links, paid guest posting, etc.), which are still a threat. I Noticed Some website dropped their SERP significantly due to building links unnaturally
Prevention is better than cure. So, you shouldn’t wait for Google to ignore negative SEO attacks. You should Always Monitor your Backlinks profile daily. If you find any unnatural backlinks, then audit them and make a Disavow request through the “Google Disavow Tool”
Matt Cutts, Former Head of Webspam at Google, Suggested (On a YouTube video) disavowing links that are not relevant or built through Spamming.
So here are the to do lists:
- Monitor Your Backlink Profile Regularly: You can Use SEO tools Like Ahrefs, Semrush or Google Search Console to monitor your Backlinks profile daily.
- Identify Toxic, Spammy Links or Suspicious Links: Check Your Newly Built Backlinks using Ahrefs, Semrush, or MajesticSEO SEO tool. Find out The Toxic links or Links that are suspicious
- Create a list and Submit for Disavow: Create a .txt file with the suspicious links that are not naturally built or might be built by competitors. Then, Submit the file through the Google Disavow Tool”. Continue the process when you find new links.
- Build natural Links from Niche relevant Authority Sites: Building Authority Links is a part of gaining Google’s trust. Always try to Build Relevant Links through outreach from Highly authoritative sites
2. Anchor Text Toxification
Anchor Text Toxification Is a Link-building tactic where spammers use toxic Anchor Text to create Backlinks for their competitors. The main purpose of Anchor Text Toxification is to make a website look spammy to the eyes of Google.
Spammers create different types of clickable anchor text using toxic keywords such as…
- Po*n Video
- Buy Viag*a Online
- Online Casino
- Best Go*e Sites
- Buy me Coffee
Here is the screenshot of a website, a victim of an Anchor Text Toxification attack by their competitors (screenshot 1 &2). There were 13,000+ Backlinks created within 2 weeks using adult anchor text. Most of these links are from auto-approved Blog comments. SEO automation Tools such as GSA Search engine Ranker or Scrapebox are used to build such links.
According to Gary Illyes, Google’s advanced algorithm Ignored Such links, but you can see (screenshot 3) that the website started losing its ranking, the number of keywords indexed are dropped significantly and it lost almost 20% of its organic traffic.
How to protect: The thing is, there is no protection against Anchor Text Toxification attacks. But you can protect your website from getting penalized or losing your ranking. To counter Anchor Text Toxification, you should audit your backlinks profile, find the toxic links, and submit a Disavow request. Always try to Diversify the Anchor Text profile to look natural.
3. Link farming
Link Farming Is a BlackHat SEO tactic used to manipulate Ranking on Google. It used to be a very Popular SEO tactic before Google launched the Penguin Algorithm.
Links Farming is a tactic Where multiple Websites exchange links with each other to increase domain authority and point links back to the targeted website to increase ranking. Each. Websites are interconnected and aimed to increase the authority of each website.
Link farms are often built using private domains or free Web 2.0 platforms (Like Blogger, WordPress, medium, Quora, Tumblr, Wix, Weebly, Jimdo, dev.to, etc)
Here is the diagram of a link farm. In this diagram, there are five websites exchanging links with each other to manipulate the authority of each site. Each site will point a link back to the targeted website to improve ranking.
This tactic is against Google guidelines, and the websites involved in link farming end up getting manual or algorithm penalties.
Spammers are using these link-building Tactics to harm their competitor’s ranking. Links farming is a more effective negative SEO tactic compared to Building spammy links. This Linkbuilding method looks more natural, but the blackhat SEO method boosts ranking
4. PBN Backlink Attack
PBN Backlink Attack