Weird negative SEO done by someone I know to themselves

I know someone and if you Google their name there will be 5 pages of results with weird content. It appears that the person paid someone to create many blog posts on ridiculous topics. I am making up some examples but they could be weird like this:

John Smith is raising money to create time machine

Mars space flight program has found new project lead

John Smith saved a baby from burning building

Stormy Daniels said that John Smith was better lover than Trump

I don't know why this person is doing this but I suspect its to hide some dirt. If someone searches about him online there will be so many junk results that most people would give up looking deeper.

Did anyone ever see this kind of behavior?

Pretty common. They put a lot of SEO spam out there hoping to push anything that makes them look bad far enough down in the rankings that people won't bother to dig enough to find them. There are companies that do this either exclusively or as part of a more broad reputation management offering.

Ahmed Al Banna said:

Stormy Daniels said that John Smith was better lover than Trump

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My personal favorite!

BlackHatSoda said:

Pretty common. They put a lot of SEO spam out there hoping to push anything that makes them look bad far enough down in the rankings that people won't bother to dig enough to find them. There are companies that do this either exclusively or as part of a more broad reputation management offering.

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I know this is done with normal content but I never seen people write stupid stuff about themselves. This guy now looks like a joke.

If I was potential employer and Googled his name and found all weird stuff I would instantly delete his resume.

Ahmed Al Banna said:

I know this is done with normal content but I never seen people write stupid stuff about themselves. This guy now looks like a joke.

If I was potential employer and Googled his name and found all weird stuff I would instantly delete his resume.

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It could be someone trolling them or someone just trying to add distracting fluff to confuse people.

If the content they had created is nonsensical, they could claim the real content they want to hide/discredit is also nonsense. Creates plausible deniability.

BlackHatSoda said:

It could be someone trolling them or someone just trying to add distracting fluff to confuse people.

If the content they had created is nonsensical, they could claim the real content they want to hide/discredit is also nonsense. Creates plausible deniability.

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I didn't think of plausible deniability angle.

There are two possibility
1. Hide negative pages from Google's top rank
2. Hide positive pages from Google by a competitor
It is impossible to predict it without seeing the actual keyword/ page you are talking about