Is negative SEO illegal?

I don't think it should be. It's a part of internet business, adapt to it and win or die from it and lose. It's as simple as that.

illegal? not sure about that, I've heard that you can be shot at dawn though if caught!

If it could be proved you did negative seo and the websites income dropped dramatically there could be a case to sue.If someone torched your cafe and got caught,if they are prosecuted you can then sue them(at least in the UK).I do not know of any criminal case like this but if negative seo picks up,there will be one eventually.

cloakndagger said:

If it could be proved you did negative seo and the websites income dropped dramatically there could be a case to sue.

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Um, no... there would not.

Do not interpret google as being part of or synonymous with international law. They are worlds apart.

Its not illegal yet. The whole concept of what is or what is not legal with regards spam and seo is blurred by what is normally acceptable business practice anyway. Even during the American Election campaigns, candidates do what they can to discredit their competitors in ad campaigns with true or even false inuendo and rubbish.

Google have already proven that there is no full and proper international law governing the internet. It is however morally wrong to take advantage of the facility of negative SEO that google appears to now offer blatantly. Negative SEO has always been available through google, but has until now been less well publicized by themselves. for example, you can destroy a competitor adsense account and income by simply repeated and regular clicking from a single IP. Google has simply thrown the doors open to the common man to practice negative seo on a more demeaning and widespread basis.

trust me, it works, i do it for tons of clients...and no, it isn't illegal...it is strategy, plain and simple.

Google has already admitted that negative SEO is possible, but has labelled it as "difficult"

I am pretty sure it is illegal in most European countries and will be considered as act of company sabotage.
I darkly remember one lawsuit here about it.

right now hotels and restaurants keywords ranking are taken by yelp mostly. If in coming days google start its own listing, i think it will deindex yelp too or buy yelp domain.

Ohh no. I might give an business idea to Google....

subster said:

I am pretty sure it is illegal in most European countries and will be considered as act of company sabotage.
I darkly remember one lawsuit here about it.

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Clearly you're probably confusing negative SEO with libel
Negative SEO does not actually exist, only google has made it exist.

I know one case of a blackmailer, who has extorted a toy online shop with negative seo and hif I remember correct he was caught and sued for that.
It does not matter if it Negative SEO "exists" or not for the court. Fact is if you can proof that a competitor started takeing action to harm your business it will be sued as sabotage as far as I know. But I admit every post from in this topic is based on superficial knowledge.

subster said:

I know one case of a blackmailer, who has extorted a toy online shop with negative seo and hif I remember correct he was caught and sued for that.

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So the act of extortion was illegal, not the negative seo

I do not support neg seo in any way....

But surely it CANNOT be seen as illegal. The whole search engine and framework is an artificial construct created by Google, so whatever you do and however you behave within this construct is Google's issue to deal with and technically their fault- because they have created and so caused it.

Just my opinion, I am no expert.

If I recall correctly these are the only ones that are truly -illegal-

Duplication that?s obviously you

XSS (cross site scripting)

DDOS Via a botnet etc

SQL injection or compromising the box

If you are into negative SEO but didnt fancy going to court then you can always mess with in house team of your competitor (stops their time working on site ? ?don?t always want to kill enemy, just wound them? )

This is hilarious. A forum called BLACK HAT SEO discussing whether Negative SEO is moral/legal or not. So it's okay to take a site selling replica Rolex's HIGHER so it ranks right next to the real Rolex, but its not okay to push Rolex LOWER? It's okay to break these Google rules, but not these rules? I get it, legal is one thing, Google's rules is another. But think about it. Granted Rolex will come after you if they had a clue, but what a nightmare for the lawyers to try to talk to the SEO geeks and get a judge to actually understand what's going on and actually prove anything. You'd have to be able to produce records of correspondence showing an agreement was entered into to harm another business or entity. How they did it (what techniques, links, etc.) would be almost a moot point. If the people were careful, good frickin luck proving anything. Next to impossible.

Manipulation of the SERPS is manipulation of the SERPS. It's up to Google, their thousands of engineers and their billions to figure it out. Until then, there's nothing wrong with essentially exploiting imperfections in their algo, beit it for increased rank or decreased rank. I for one am looking very forward to Negative SEO growing in leaps and bounds just to see what Google does. Penguin was just a scare tactic to try to stop people from massive backlink fabrication. They have already started to gradually roll it back in my opinion, probably because of an increase in Negative SEO. Their only solution is to decrease the weight of backlinks in the algo and hire more Indians for manual reviews.

What you don't see here is a lot of people willing to admit they are doing it. A lot more than you think.

Negative SEO has been around arguably as long as Google itself. It?s not a new strategy by any means. In fact, it even has a nickname: Google Bowling. It?s the act of throwing all the most spammy black hat linkbuilding tactics in the book at a site that ranks higher than yours in an attempt to knock it from the search engine rankings in order to open up a spot for your own site.

Expertpeon said:

Clearly you're probably confusing negative SEO with libel
Negative SEO does not actually exist, only google has made it exist.

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This is true , negative SEO doesn't actually exist, so you can't be sued for that.

However, it's all about the lawyers and the court game, they can still put a case on you for some BLAH reason and convict you for doing what you did.
The difference is you'll not be convicted for "negative SEO" but for "BLAH" .
I know some people from my city getting freed and others convicted to 3-5 years , for the exactly same crime...
There are many games in the law, you just need money to play them...

But this can only be done by someone who is willing to drop big $ on the case... so don't play with the big dogs..

Expertpeon said:

Nope...
I know this keeps you comfortable in your bed at night, but you're beyond incorrect here. However, honestly, what kind of small SEO'd sites are "aged with solid links"?
My guess is you'd need 5-10k links/mth coming in that google just loves (naturally) in order to be somewhat immune to negative SEO. I've done it successfully on large websites even way before the newest changes.

People may honestly suck at doing it, but it's relatively straightforward and age of the site and such is irrelevant.

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So, what's your process?

"Negative" SEO is infact not legal in most European countries, and it would also be seen illegal in the US. Has nothing to do with what Google is or not. People who do not believe its illegal, I dare you to openly making negative seo on competition. Infact its not legal in any country. Just depends on how you explain it in court.

@"consultant" Oh god, let me also presume you make credit card fraud and steal what ever you can get your hands on? I hope sincerly you will be hit with negative seo on one of your best money sites(Even though you dont make money from IM atm), so you will change your mind. A hard slap is the only thing which will "cure" you.

I don't think it could ever be illegal unless someday we have a one world government.