Negative SEO describes deliberate attempts to damage another site's search performance. The link-based version, pointing large volumes of spammy links at a competitor, is the best known. Google has said repeatedly that its systems are designed to ignore links like these, and that most sites do not need to do anything about them. Other forms, such as hacking or content scraping, are more serious.
Link-based attacks
The typical pattern is a sudden flood of links from spam sites, often with adult, gambling or pharma themes, or exact-match commercial anchors. The idea is to make the target look like it is running a link scheme.
Google's public position is that it works hard to prevent this kind of harm, and that its systems discount spam links rather than penalize the target. Google has not published how it tells attacks from purchases, so cases remain hard to prove either way.
Other forms that matter more
Most real damage comes from attacks on the site itself rather than its links.
- Hacking and injecting spam pages or hidden links
- Fake removal requests sent to sites that link to you
- Scraping and republishing your content
- Fake reviews or impersonation on third-party sites
- Load attacks that make the site slow or unavailable to crawlers
Sensible precautions
Monitor new referring domains in a backlink tool, and check the Manual actions and Security issues reports in Search Console. If a flood of spam links coincides with a manual action, or you have strong reason to expect one, a domain-level disavow is the documented tool. Otherwise, Google's guidance suggests leaving junk links alone.
Example
A sudden burst of junk links
An illustrative e-signature startup, Inkbarrow, sees thousands of new links from foreign-language spam domains in a month, all using its product name plus "cheap". There is no manual action and traffic is unchanged. The team logs the domains, keeps monitoring and does not disavow yet, ready to act if a manual action appears.
Common mistakes
Blaming every ranking drop on an attack
Algorithm updates, competitor improvements and site changes are much more common causes.
Disavowing in a panic
Disavowing without a manual action risks removing useful links along with the junk.
Questions
Google says it is designed to prevent that and that most attacks fail. It is not impossible, which is why monitoring Search Console is worth doing.
