Is negative SEO illegal?

[rugbyjack2005]

If you think that you can spend five bucks and plummet somebody's rankings in one go, you are mistaken; if the site is well optimized, aged, and has some solid links, it would take you far more than that and there is zero guarantee that you will ever succeed. The "Negative SEO" term was born in the post-Penguin frenzy and so far, I have seem zero solid proof that it exists; sure, you can probably do some damage to a site if you drop quite a few links on malware infested servers, but using Xrumer, SB or any other link building tool....I seriously doubt that

Noone said you can buy a Fiverr gig and drop an aged domain easily. As i said earlier, i haven't tested it and i wanted to find out if it was illegal first but i reckon you could drop a site under 6 months old with a 10k Xrumer blast going to an exact match keyword. E.g. replicating over optimisation. Aged domains are obviously much harder and possibly not possible but what i want to understand what the thresholds are.

I doubt many people will post their test results on negative seo on here as they will want to remain anonymous.

 

[rugbyjack2005]

Noone said you can buy a Fiverr gig and drop an aged domain easily. As i said earlier, i haven't tested it and i wanted to find out if it was illegal first but i reckon you could drop a site under 6 months old with a 10k Xrumer blast going to an exact match keyword. E.g. replicating over optimisation. Aged domains are obviously much harder and possibly not possible but what i want to understand what the thresholds are.

I doubt many people will post their test results on negative seo on here as they will want to remain anonymous.

When i talk about the age of a domain, i am just using it as a rough indicator of the number of links that is has rather than just the age of the domain. The more links a site has, the more difficult negative seo will be...

 

[illfounded21]

I would be inclined to listen to expertpeon, having read his posts before on this area- it seems he is one of the few that has genuine experience in this field.

 

[imserious]

Google is a private company with a very private algorithm to rank websites.
People have found out through tests and papers/patents by google that backlinks to a site is the most important factor used by google for ranking. This has not been confirmed by Google officially.
If backlinks were the only factor, there is no reason that askthebuilder(dot)com would have been punished by panda/penguin.

If tomorrow google drops the weightage of backlinks in its algo and replaces it with e.g. social signals then what?
Linking to another website is not illegal, can never be as this is the very definition of internet. Interconnected networks.

What we term as negative SEO ( sending links to a site ) is the basic fabric of internet.
If one company is using that as the basis for its algo to rank websites, then it is the problem of that company, this does not make it illegal.

 

[Expertpeon]

Quick and short - Seo/Blackhat definition means a big journey to be one step in front of your competitors, not to do damage for other people and their business. It's lamehat and it does negative karma for your life, stop thinking this way.

This is precisely how big business operates, so the Kharma argument definitely isn't convincing.
Google destroys mapquest by removing it from their engine and placing "google maps" all over
Google destroys nextag by introducing google shopping (and of course, not ranking nextag)

 

[bakxos]

So when google damages your assets.... it's not illegal?

My websites were also hit by penguin. I actually deleted some of them. Its not Google that ruined them though and they were not 5 pages websites. I relied on Google to bring traffic and I built the links. Google does not damage your website. It just stops sending traffic. Google is not a non for profit organisation that promises you equal opportunities and fair treatment. They have guidelines and holes in their algorithm. We know that both of them exist. If they find out that you try to take advantage of their algo holes, they send you to 1000 page and make you read the guidelines.

I have seen quite a lot of posts that you have written and in my opinion, you considerably fail to understand that Google is a business and you keep whining while recognizing that you were the first that you tried to game their website.

I will repeat that I lost money due to the recent update but I am not whining about it (10/10 of your posts include whining for google) since BH seo has risks and I knew that. If you dont accept the risks dont take them mate.

 

[Expertpeon]

My websites were also hit by penguin. I actually deleted some of them. Its not Google that ruined them though and they were not 5 pages websites. I relied on Google to bring traffic and I built the links. Google does not damage your website. It just stops sending traffic.

Links do not damage your website, they're just sending you links?
You seem to be completely insane with your logic on this one. I never "whine" about google's updates. I just moved my traffic sources back in Feb to other engines and built out a ton of sites to rank in google (which I did not even realize until after they hit the blog networks, that these other engines had 80% the traffic for some of my keywords and I was already ranking modestly well)

Google is a business, and as a business that controls a $500 billion yearly market they are corrupt, evil and don't give a shit who the damage. Negative SEO is their bed, and they will lie in it.
I'm making more now than before Feb, even when I had top 5 on a massive term in Google.... that doesn't change the argument that if negative SEO is illegal, then google's algorithm definitely is.

Google doesn't seem to get it, the little guy (who works hard and knows how to program) is going to make money on the internet. Whether that be by the smartest people selling negative SEO campaigns (which are easier to operate than ranking a site!) or by ranking quality content. They seem to be more interested in allowing the former, so I will negative SEO whenever I feel like it.

 

[bakxos]

I will repeat that Google is just a business. If you have complains ( to be honest I will agree with you on that) about their market share and their power on e-commerce, complain to the people that you vote. It might sound weird to say it, but google is allowed (literally speaking) to work like that.

In addition, Yahoo takes one year to notice a post, Bing is a Google autoblog and the rest are Google powered search engines.
So first of all, when it comes to organic traffic please enlighten us for the search engines that you are talking about (these with the 80% share) and secondly the fact that you just noticed where are your visitors come from is funny for quite a lot of reasons.

 

[weedface18]

no this should not put you in jail, plain and simple, you didn't rob anybody, kill anybody, harm anybody, a website is not a physical thing, so it's not like you damaged any property

 

[bakxos]

no this should not put you in jail, plain and simple, you didn't rob anybody, kill anybody, harm anybody, a website is not a physical thing, so it's not like you damaged any property

So if you steal a patent you dont go to Jail? If you do wire fraud you dont go to Jail?

Edit: I just noticed your nickname.

 

[Expertpeon]

I will repeat that Google is just a business. If you have complains ( to be honest I will agree with you on that) about their market share and their power on e-commerce, complain to the people that you vote. It might sound weird to say it, but google is allowed (literally speaking) to work like that.

In addition, Yahoo takes one year to notice a post, Bing is a Google autoblog and the rest are Google powered search engines.
So first of all, when it comes to organic traffic please enlighten us for the search engines that you are talking about (these with the 80% share) and secondly the fact that you just noticed where are your visitors come from is funny for quite a lot of reasons.

You seriously do not understand how bing/yahoo rank anything. It's ok, I guess. Yahoo/Bing's algorithm was greatly improved around 2 weeks ago. And I mean GREATLY improved. They pick up new sites in the same time period google does... and rank them faster (at least with the HQ links I build)
Their results for a lot of keywords I'm in are spot on for what the consumer wants, so I'm definitely hopeful they see this as an opportunity because google's engine is going into the toilet as far as organic search.

You clearly do not know how to check how many searches a term gets on Bing/Yahoo per month, so I won't enlighten potential competitors. However, for many major terms the #s were very healthy (around 70-80% in several of my niches that google had)

Bing and Google results are 180 degrees different... You have no idea what you're talking about.
Google has a 68% search share? Not 80. Their share internationally (particularly in Asia) is terrible.

Also, yes, what google is doing is illegal. I'm one of the few people taking personal action and suing them at present (though it's unrelated to search ).
http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=474160
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304707604577422252936858954.html

So if you steal a patent you dont go to Jail? If you do wire fraud you dont go to Jail?

Edit: I just noticed your nickname.

You don't seem to understand anything about how negative SEO would be treated legally. Making links to a website and damaging their search position is certainly not illegal in any way. The drop in ranking is 100% the responsibility of Google to correct.

 

[bakxos]

You seriously do not understand how bing/yahoo rank anything. It's ok, I guess. Yahoo/Bing's algorithm was greatly improved around 2 weeks ago. And I mean GREATLY improved. They pick up new sites in the same time period google does... and rank them faster (at least with the HQ links I build)
Their results for a lot of keywords I'm in are spot on for what the consumer wants, so I'm definitely hopeful they see this as an opportunity because google's engine is going into the toilet as far as organic search.

Bing and Google results are 180 degrees different... You have no idea what you're talking about.
Google has a 68% search share? Not 80. Their share internationally (particularly in Asia) is terrible.

Also, yes, what google is doing is illegal. I'm one of the few people taking personal action and suing them at present (though it's unrelated to search ).
http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=474160
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304707604577422252936858954.html

[/COLOR]

You don't seem to understand anything about how negative SEO would be treated legally. Making links to a website and damaging their search position is certainly not illegal in any way. The drop in ranking is 100% the responsibility of Google to correct.

I told you that I agree that their power should be regulated although one of the links you gave has to do with data and privacy. But I would imagine that the reason for any regulations initiative would not be the effectiveness of BH seo and how blog comments spam is not effective any more...

The reason for that would be the harm they do on websites as they try to take off the BH seo, the collateral damage. For example wpmu.org etc.

 

[Expertpeon]

I told you that I agree that their power should be regulated although one of the links you gave has to do with data and privacy. But I would imagine that the reason for any regulations initiative would not be the effectiveness of BH seo and how blog comments spam is not effective any more...

The reason for that would be the harm they do on websites as they try to take off the BH seo, the collateral damage. For example wpmu.org etc.

Their inconsistency in applying their "rules" is what is getting them looked at by the US and EU for anti-trust violations.
They don't apply their "paid links will crush your site" mantra to sites like Amazon (or even themselves) but they do it to every small business. Their lack of a fair playing field has them being looked at (also, of course, their privacy violations).

It shouldn't come as a surprise here that every facet of google is run as poorly as search is. For instance, regarding google checkout with one of my websites, my state Commissioner (who regulates money transmitters) sent them a letter about something they did which was extremely illegal to my company. Google had 3 weeks to respond, did they? No. As a result the Commissioner is attempting to fine them, and we're having to go to court around here to retrieve the money they owe.

It's an open and shut case, but google isn't even responding anymore. I can only assume they do such illegal things all the time to lots and lots of people...

 

[toptoptop]

It is not more or less illegal then "normal" SEO.

 

[NeoPat]

Expertpeon kick their ass im seriously getting more and more fed up with Google as time goes by and the more i learn what a twisted company its turning out to be

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Aty]

I don't think there is a law saying that negative SEO is illegal, so it's pretty much legal.

 

[Dannn]

To be honest, it's a shady path to go down. Not only are there ethical questions, but legality wise there are issues.

A victim of negative SEO could make the argument that it's "Intentional Interference With Business Relations". The issue of course would be proving it, but not impossible.

 

[Expertpeon]

To be honest, it's a shady path to go down. Not only are there ethical questions, but legality wise there are issues.

A victim of negative SEO could make the argument that it's "Intentional Interference With Business Relations". The issue of course would be proving it, but not impossible.

Yeaaaaahhh no..

 

[thetrustedzone]

G consider any off page seo activity illegal ........

 

[Aty]

G consider any off page seo activity illegal ........

Bullshit. Then all the SEO firms are doing illegal things? I don't think so.