Public
There's hope in battling negative SEO attempts
We need more control over inbound links.
Negative SEO attempts reflect badly on brands as webmasters may consider it a genuine attempt to spam them for links. For this reason we need the ability to self-nominate inorganic inbound links just like we can nofollow outbound links from our own pages.
In today's hangout with +John Mueller from Google I pointed out the problem of increasing rate of spam coming from SEO sabotage campaigns. If we're lucky we may in the future see means of dealing with malicious attempts through at least two suggested ways:
1) Google Webmaster Tools section to tell Google which links to ignore.
2) Statement from Google explaining the likelihood of negative SEO actually having effect in order to discourage further attempts.
Your Opinion
Do you support the idea of having the ability to discount links through Google Webmaster Tools?
We need more control over inbound links.
Negative SEO attempts reflect badly on brands as webmasters may consider it a genuine attempt to spam them for links. For this reason we need the ability to self-nominate inorganic inbound links just like we can nofollow outbound links from our own pages.
In today's hangout with +John Mueller from Google I pointed out the problem of increasing rate of spam coming from SEO sabotage campaigns. If we're lucky we may in the future see means of dealing with malicious attempts through at least two suggested ways:
1) Google Webmaster Tools section to tell Google which links to ignore.
2) Statement from Google explaining the likelihood of negative SEO actually having effect in order to discourage further attempts.
Your Opinion
Do you support the idea of having the ability to discount links through Google Webmaster Tools?
View 12 previous comments
+Chris Jenkins in other words Google should just ignore what they know are inorganic links, even at a risk of filtering out some organic links by mistake. This is much more acceptable than penalising an innocent attempt of a webmaster who is not familiar with Google's guidelines. (e.g. do they really know that link exchanges are frowned upon by Google).May 11, 2012
I'm not sure that spam.txt is the best solution because that would alert the villain that you were onto him and he could just move to something else. Disavowing all activity from specified domains via WMT seems to be the best answer and the data gathered from those that do disavow could be used to protect the mums and dads sites who have no clue about this.
The best thing is that Google is now acknowledging this is a problem, so there is a prospect of a resolution.
(Dan, I'm confident a site can be dislodged from the front page without pointing a single link, negative seo is not just links).May 11, 2012
Imo for both Google and webmasters it would be better to make sure that negative SEO has no impact, i.e. killing the negative SEO market. So off-site should only give positive effects or negative off-site signals should just be ignored....
My second problem with option 1 is that black-hats can play it. For example, a scam where they first spam the web with links and then charge the webmaster to clean it up which would be made easier with a spam.txt or WMT.....
So option 2...May 11, 2012- Option 2 was the way we were told the system was supposedly working. I'm sure they would dearly love to revert to option 2 because any other solution is going to cost money to implement but since it seems that other solutions are being proposed then apparently option 2 is no longer an option.May 11, 2012
- +Jim Munro I am sure you are right... But it does look like option 2 didn't work, did it? So option 2 might cost Google more then just adding a feature to WMT... But in the long run option 2 would be more efficient for all, imo...
Besides that. If Google does implement something like option 1 wouldn't that be a boost to the negative black-hat SEO market. That is, if Google did implement something like option 1 they pretty much say "yes, black-hat SEO got us and please help us because we don't know and we cannot help webmaster that give the online community great content". Imo, great content should be on top of the search results no matter what....May 12, 2012 - It's been years, not months, since option 2 was silently abandoned, so I'm wildly guessing that complexity might make it too late to revert to their publicly-stated policy of not using negative signals (that could be provided from an external source). Offering option 1 would just be another result of constant adaptation to change. The only thing unusual about an option1 change would be that, for the first time in history, some of the long-term publishers of the internet might gain a means of clawing their way back to the positions they formerly and deservedly occupied (assuming they still have funds left to re-hire the required staff).May 12, 2012
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