can negative seo still harm competitors effectively?

Mohammad Kamran said:
eping an eye on your backlink profile is still a good practice. Would be interesting to hear from anyone who has actually seen rankings drop because of a negative SEO attack recently.
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Recently, GSC reported tons of links to my main money page on my site. All the url slugs indicated they came from porn sites. Every link was an exact match money keyword that my page was targeting. I only lately noticed these but they've been happening for at least 6 months. That coincides with a 90% drop in impressions for that keyword. Coincidence? I think not. Correlation does not mean causation. I am surprised by almost everyone saying stuff like "Google is much better at filtering out spammy links now than previously". That is what Google wants you to believe. The reality I think is different.
 
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In many cases, ranking drops happen because of other SEO issues, not only negative SEO. It is important to check everything before blaming backlinks.
 
simon39842 said:
Recently, GSC reported tons of links to my main money page on my site. All the url slugs indicated they came from porn sites. Every link was an exact match money keyword that my page was targeting. I only lately noticed these but they've been happening for at least 6 months. That coincides with a 90% drop in impressions for that keyword. Coincidence? I think not. Correlation does not mean causation. I am surprised by almost everyone saying stuff like "Google is much better at filtering out spammy links now than previously". That is what Google wants you to believe. The reality I think is different.
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That's an interesting case. A large number of spammy links appearing around the same time as a ranking drop is definitely worth investigating, but I'd still be careful about assuming they were the only cause. I'd also compare the timing with Google updates, review the page itself, and check whether competitors made significant improvements. Sometimes multiple factors can overlap.
 
Google is much better at ignoring low quality spam links than it used to be Genuine ranking drops are more often caused by a site's own technical content or backlink issues than by external negative SEO.
 
it can effect only is its in too large quantity. otherwise google detects spam itself
 
Grayson Vale said:
I have been seeing mixed opinions about negative SEO lately. some say google is much better now at ignoring spammy or toxic backlinks ,while others believe it can still cause ranking drops if done at scale.

what's your experience does negative SEO still pose a real thread today
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In my experience, Negative SEO is not as effective as it once was, Ranking drops are usually caused by technical problems, content quality, or algorithm updates rather than spam backlink's alone.
 
Grayson Vale said:
I have been seeing mixed opinions about negative SEO lately. some say google is much better now at ignoring spammy or toxic backlinks ,while others believe it can still cause ranking drops if done at scale.

what's your experience does negative SEO still pose a real thread today
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In my experience Google ignores most low quality spam links but a sudden wave of manipulative signals is still worth keeping an eye on.
 
I think the impact of negative SEO also depends on how dependent your rankings are on a small number of links. If most of your authority comes from just a handful of backlinks, losing even a few of them can be noticeable. Sites with a broader, more diverse link profile tend to be much more resilient because no single link carries too much weight. That's one reason I prefer earning links from different sources over relying heavily on one strategy.
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google now ignores the spam backlinks but sum how it still effects the overall seo a little bit. it can effect website performance but not too much
 
Grayson Vale said:
I have been seeing mixed opinions about negative SEO lately. some say google is much better now at ignoring spammy or toxic backlinks ,while others believe it can still cause ranking drops if done at scale.

what's your experience does negative SEO still pose a real thread today
Click to expand...
Yes ,negative SEO may still harm competitors effectively.
 
I think negative SEO is much less effective than it used to be. Google seems pretty good at ignoring random spam links now. I’d still monitor the backlink profile, but I’d focus more on building a strong site than worrying about every bad link.
 
Grayson Vale said:
I have been seeing mixed opinions about negative SEO lately. some say google is much better now at ignoring spammy or toxic backlinks ,while others believe it can still cause ranking drops if done at scale.

what's your experience does negative SEO still pose a real thread today
Click to expand...
I Think negative SEO is harder to pull off than it used to be, Especially with random spammy backlink's. That said, I Wouldn’t ignore it completely, particularly if there are unusual link spikes or other suspicious activity.
 
Spammy backlinks alone are much less reliable as a negative SEO tactic now because Google ignores a lot of obvious link spam.

The bigger risk is usually things like site hacks, indexation issues, or reputation attacks rather than someone blasting a domain with bad links.
 
Grayson Vale said:
I have been seeing mixed opinions about negative SEO lately. some say google is much better now at ignoring spammy or toxic backlinks ,while others believe it can still cause ranking drops if done at scale.

what's your experience does negative SEO still pose a real thread today
Click to expand...
I Think random spam links are mostly ignored these days, but I wouldn’t say negative SEO is completely dead, Large or unusual links patterns are still worth monitoring, especially on competitive sites.
 
Grayson Vale said:
I have been seeing mixed opinions about negative SEO lately. some say google is much better now at ignoring spammy or toxic backlinks ,while others believe it can still cause ranking drops if done at scale.

what's your experience does negative SEO still pose a real thread today
Click to expand...
I’ve seen negative SEO still have an impact, but it’s much harder to hurt a well-established site with spammy backlinks alone. Google is generally better at ignoring obvious link spam.
 
I think negative SEO is much harder to pull off today, especially with Google getting better at discounting obvious spammy links.

That said, large scale or highly manipulative campaigns can still create problems so monitoring backlinks and keeping a clean link profile is still important.
 
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