Competitors Can Affect Your Rankings With Bad Links

[morestar]

There has been a few stirrings over the past few weeks about a new Google over-optimization penalty (or as some label a devaluation of link value) which were all derived from the quote by Matt Cutts of which almost everyone has heard or read where hey says,

So all those people who have sort of been doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly doing their SEO, compared to the people who are just making great content and trying to make a fantastic site, we want to sort of make that playing field a little bit more level. And so that’s the sort of thing where we try to make Google Bot smarter, we try to make our relevance more adaptive so that people don’t do SEO…and we also start to look at the people who abuse it, whether they throw too many keywords on a page or whether they exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect.

Whether or not Google can actually detect what would be considered truly bad links or not, they've obviously made up their mind as to what they consider them to be which is besides the point. The point is, and has been pointed out by Barry Schwartz, Google has been issuing a lot of warnings and it looks like there's really nothing one can do to stop a competitor or enemy from ruining your business - from the standpoint of the Google search results. It's happening, people are receiving letters from Google asking them to make changes to their websites and/or submit a list of unnatural sites linking to them of which they have no control over.

We have to accept it, Google's algorithm is a computer program and it can be used against itself if bright enough minds figure out a way to. I'm not saying all the website owners that received these letters from Google aren't guilty as charged but out of the thousands, there must be a few that are being hit by competitors building the unnatural links against them.

There are a lot of people who don't believe a competitor can ruin your link profile and maybe some websites are immune to such actions, but are they? Could WebProWorld.com be affected by a competitor building bad links to their site? Could Amazon or even Chapters Indigo? That's it? Someone decides to buy links pointing to your website, then reports you and in a few weeks your website is out of the search results?

Here's a decent comment from the article by Barry in response to some comments commending Google for taking a proper stand against certain link building practices,

Except that Google's algorithm's make mistakes all of the time and unfairly flag people for no bad intent on their part. And Google doesn't tell you what's actually wrong, leading you to guess and make mistakes trying to comply. And then people's AdSense accounts or Adwords accounts get banned, with very little ability to get the attention of an actual human being to spend time with you actually going over what issues exist or giving you a fair review. And then your entire business is screwed. Google's mistakes lead to businesses getting destroyed and people losing jobs. It's easy to be all gung-ho about this when you don't realize that Google's actions against this type of thing have a massive effect on not only people that buy links, but innocent people who are guilty of nothing and are caught up trying to navigate the Kafka-esque world that is Google's "customer service" department.

[SteveGerencser]

We've been telling people this for years.

[Clarrie]

This has to be one of the biggest fears for anyone involved in SEO or otherwise managing a site.

And the answer to it is in Google's hands. They have every right to examine the link profile of a site to attempt to determine if links are "good" or "bad" - it's an important part of their algorithm after all, but if they are going to start to impose significant active penalties (active as opposed to simply deprecating the value of poor links), then they should provide a mechanism for webmasters to disavow incoming links through Webmaster Tools to prevent malicious link building. If unnatural link profiles do end up being actively penalised, in the same way that there are unscrupulous SEOs who purchase links, then there are going to be some who attack competitors by purchasing "negative" links, and it behoves Google to provide suitable defensive tools.

[Mike-H]

Lots of speculation but where is the proof? Name the sites being contacted by Google that have had their trousers pulled down for 'buying links' and provide the background of what they actually did. Devaluing links... maybe, put penalising a site... really?

If this were reality it could spawn a new breed of so called SEO experts operating in a field of 'negative SEO'. With the strap line 'we will ruin your competitors business' and off they go buying dirty links with adult keywords from risky sites targeting your neighbours legitimate site.

[SEOforGoogle]

I've seen keywords get wiped out in the rankings, while others remain. I think this latest incarnation does a really intensive review of the links all using anchor text and punishes accordingly. Just another way that Google is trying to control the way we link,

[morestar]

We've been telling people this for years.

Yes I know, I mean I was always on the fence - not for sure knowing if it was true or not - but the evidence looks pretty clear to me right now...

[morestar]

Lots of speculation but where is the proof?

Well, Google has penalized JCPenney, Forbes, and Overstock.com for "shady" linking practices according to a few thousand articles on the web including the one I just linked to and slightly quoted...

[chrisJumbo]

Well, Google has penalized JCPenney, Forbes, and Overstock.com for "shady" linking practices according to a few thousand articles on the web including the one I just linked to and slightly quoted...

That was for admitted link-buying and shady linking practices done by their SEOs. The penalties were not given out by an algorithm. It isn't that I don't think one could be affected (and I don't want to be a guinea pig to find out), but if you were able to prove the shady links weren't done by you, you should be able to get the penalty removed. But I also agree with one of the previous posters who suggested through WMT being able to discount the links if you agree that they are "spammy" and not obtained by you. :O)

[morestar]

If google could implement something like this that webmaster could accept or decline links.

This actually would be great. Maybe in the near future, unless someone can think of a problem with this scenario.

[weegillis]

The dot com business model, in and of itself has always been a, 'get in, get all, get out as quickly as one can and move on' strategy. Nobody was ever thinking 'negative SEO' when this model was conceived. It was evident to anyone with an imagination for numbers and exponential growth, and still is that viral is best, and probably the only optimal approach to cashing in on a strictly dot com venture. Anything happening in this short a time is long gone by the time the negative SEO hits.

From the posturing in the previous paragraph, one can infer that any business that is solely based on the World Wide Web is destined for a permanent uphill climb against countless unknown competitors, some of whom are in it for the game, not for a business livelihood. Most of these competitors have zero employees, no board, no incorporated status, not even a registered trade name. The playing field is so broad, it's impossible to tell how level it is.

Something negative SEO can't take away from one's business is the goodwill it has earned over its lifetime. It can't take away the brand or the familiarity users feel with its product or service. It can't take away referrals. It can't take away success stories. Mostly, it cannot take away the truth.

How much the SE's should do to protect individuals is by far and large very questionable. If I live in Timbuktu, then a competitor in Dubai is going to be hard pressed to take away my Mali-based goodwill and referrals, regardless how many keywords he has chosen to compete on. Even if he scrapes my entire site, it's still not going to faze on my existing goodwill. One quick spin with some reverse SEO and I can have them referring new customers in short order. No, this is an area where the grayness ought to be reason enough for SE's to declare it, 'hands off.'