Question

Any tip-offs that help you identify a negative SEO attack? What might raise some red flags?  

Answer 1

1. be aware of bulk backlinks done in very short time, normally comes with spammy anchor text (pharma, porn, etc) 2. any links that you didn't do (especially the low quality one) should raise a flag 3. check regularly on ahrefs and GSC to spot them

Comments

@killiecrankie I had tons of them. I have no idea why my website would be a threat. It is just a small site talking about heart disease.  

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@marji does it have good SERP? If it doesn't affect your ranking, no need to fix anything even it's not convenient for the eyes

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@killiecrankie It was a new site about one-year-old. It went from 3000 impressions a day to 76 a day. But I hired someone to fix it and it is slowly moving back up. I am now back up to 400 impressions a day.  

Answer 2

Loads of new links all within a short timeframe. The source links are obviously spam Cloaked links that show in GSC but not in other tools.  

Comments

How do I know this? Because this is how it happened to me.  

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What are cloaked links?  

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@grenoble the actual content of the page is only visible to googlebot and returns a 500 error to the naked eye.  

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@writhe this

Answer 3

Just curious? Or have a situation? I've dealt with a bunch of these, but don't post things in public. cause. well. not giving crap-hats ideas lol

Comments

Gotcha. well, U can always email me. again, don't tend to talk about that stuff in an open platform

Answer 4

A rapidly increasing amount of bot spam comments, sometimes with links to documents with malware.  

Answer 5

I had one last year. It didn’t affect my site at all.  

Comments

Yup, the same. I only consider disavowing reaaaally bad websites. Google is increasing it's database with bad domains and disavows them for you. .  
https://www.seroundtable.com/google...tural

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@adown Indeed. It's getting pretty good.  

Answer 6

I think I am currently at well over 100k bad backlinks. Fun times, they guy is almost making himself obvious as all the local seo comanys are on the same crap links, same dates, various keywords, mine is 'blackhat seo links' but it looks like his 5er gig messed up because they dropped a ton w/ just SEO as the anchor. It's laughable and not really any impact on results. Just spinning their wheels. More serious is getting GMB sites closed and needing to chase that around to bring them live again.  

Comments

@lempres11 dang how hard is it to take someone's gmb down?  

Answer 7

I’ve had one on one of my sites - and as it’s an area of my business I’m not focussing on at the moment I decided to watch and wait rather than disavow. not seeing a change in rankings related to the toxic links.  

Comments

@calondra well, I’d just achieved a few page 1 rankings with pages that were pretty basic (rubbish) and got a flurry of what seemed obviously fake enquiries. It all happened at the same time, so I figured I’d ruffled someone’s feathers.  

Answer 8

Excessive odd 404s

Answer 9

Major Amount of Backlinks overnight

Answer 10

When you look at your back links in ahrefs and see a bunch (over 500) of links with anchor text such as pussy, slut, whore, dildo, etc.  

Comments

I don't mind these. It's obvious to Google that these should be filtered out as spam, which then provides cover if I want to drop some powerful but deniable links on. ;)

Answer 11

Sheesh I'm brand new didn't even know this was a thing

Answer 12

10s of thousands of junk links suddenly showing up pointing at your website.  

Answer 13

What makes you think you have one? What are you seeing?  

Comments

@calondra oh there are many ways a negative SEO attack can happen and many different attack vectors. Some of the more basic are listed here. It's better to know what they attack on the site if you really want to learn about it like XSS vulnerabilities and why to never leave your search box open to create pages if an item doesn't exist.  

Answer 14

I would think Google would be able to know when a site is being attacked ?  

Comments

@marji it doesn't

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@anglonorman So how do you recover from a negative SEO attack. I really think that’s what happened to my website. I was going along so well.  

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@marji are you sure you didn't get hit with a core update?  

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@anglonorman I have tons of those fake spam links going to my site. I am working with a nice guy now to help me sort it all out.  

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@marji that that definitely can be one

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@anglonorman How long have you been doing SEO?  

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@marji 15 years

Answer 15

Possibly, Phyllis, but you are assuming that google cares about providing a level playing field. Google allows the penalisation of innocent sites every day. They regard it as "collateral damage"

Answer 16

Yes, Dos attack Trying to hack the website High level of bot traffic Malicious and spammy links from porn sites etc. Multiple copys of your website, or cloning your site. Happened to me last year.