- Mar 21, 2013
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Google shares took a dive, their adwords-promoting algorithm gets tougher. That's all there is to it.
It's what the data said and I think there is more value at looking at what is going on with thousands or millions of keywords in an unbiased way compared to looking at anecdotal evidence from one site.I completely disagree with the post. If all that Penguin did was erase the value of a link than why did my rankings recover with the last penguin refresh when the only thing I did was REMOVE links for the past year? If those links were essentially valueless and of no harm, than why did that fix my problems with penguin? If after a lack of high quality links was the issue why couldn't sites recover from penguin until the refresh, regardless of new high quality links?
I think it's delusional to think that negative SEO does not exist and the real problem is the lack of high quality links.
oh, but some of my websites, which are having good quality links and unique content still under the attack! why??
Negative SEO is real and works extremely well. Trust me on that. Some tests I ran worked even better than I expected with the Penguin update.
Since nobody has replied to his in the past two weeks I'll assume that negative SEO is not effective and that everyone complaining about it realizes that they have no way of actually reproducing the effects of negative SEO.A lot of people are claiming that negative SEO works extremely well but besides anecdotal evidence I have not seen anything conclusive showing that negative SEO works which makes me very skeptical.
If someone here is confident enough that negative SEO works and they can prove it with a completely verified case study, let me know and I would be happy to help facilitate it. I am the author of http://www.micrositemasters.com/blog/penguin-3-0-analysis-what-got-hurt-what-didnt-and-3-things-you-need-to-know-to-remain-relevant/ and our http://www.micrositemasters.com/blog/penguin-analysis-seo-isnt-dead-but-you-need-to-act-smarter-and-5-easy-ways-to-do-so/, and since our very large dataset is not showing any value in negative SEO I would absolutely love to do a case study that shows the opposite assuming there is someone on here convinced enough that negative SEO is possible.
I tend to think a lot of people cry "negative SEO" because they are spreading FUD and trying to get Matt Cutts to be less aggressive with his updates (or because they are bitter or want to blame someone besides themselves when they get hit by an update), but mostly my opinion is based on the data I have seen and I am perfectly willing to change my opinion if we can do a case study that proves the opposite.
As the owner of both Microsite Masters and WordAi, and considering how much traction my original Penguin Post got (Matt Cutts confirmed he read the post), any negative SEO case study we publish will certainly get in front of Google's webspam team, and I'm confident that if we were able to conclusively show that negative SEO is practical, the PR surrounding such a major discovery would make them reconsider parts of their algorithm, which would be good for everyone.
So if you really think you can make this happen, PM me and let's set up a completely statistically sound case study where we conclusively determine once and for all if negative SEO is possible and practical. Otherwise I'll continue to go with the data I have which shows that Penguin is a link devaluation update and not a link penalty update and that negative SEO is generally impractical.
Since nobody has replied to his in the past two weeks I'll assume that negative SEO is not effective and that everyone complaining about it realizes that they have no way of actually reproducing the effects of negative SEO.
If of course anyone disagrees and is willing to work together on a case study, please message me, but I think the Microsite Masters data, combined with an unwillingness for anyone to assist in a negative SEO case study pretty firmly indicates that negative SEO is not a currently effective SEO strategy.
They are sort of saying the right thing, far more knowledgeable than anyone you'll find in the white hat world or at Moz anyway!
I'm doing a case study on 178 domains, my data points to the same stuff - especially crap directory links.
We've mined through rank tracking data for millions of keywords and have seen no evidence of negative SEO.You have to understand that those who knows how to do negative SEO in a practical way have no interest getting it fixed - that's why you are not getting any responses.