Testing Negative SEO

Testing ~NEGATIVE SEO~ 1s Negative SEO Real? our evil plan: take a perfectly good site and see if we can trash its rankings about our test We set out to test if we could harm a website's Google rankings by applying "negative SEO" techniques: we took a high-ranking, very typical local business site (pool-cleaning-houston.com) and pointed thousands of low-quality paid links at the site and measured its SERP positions for its primary keyword phrase over several weeks. Four weeks and $45 dollars later, we succeeded in knocking our site off the front page of search results. Read on for the details. STARTING POSITION for kayword "pool claning houston" %23 april 30, 2012 Our Weapon: Junk Links 7,000 45,000 4,000 forum profile links blog comment links trashy sidebar links May 1through May 16, 2012 THE DATA: position ingoogle search for phrase "pool cening houston" google position 45k comment links 4k sidebar links #2 #3 #3 7k forum links drop to page 2! 10 #11 12 13 14 final position! #14 4/30 5/7 5/14 5/21 5/28 date TOTAL COST $45 Background & Conclusion Our test site (we own it) is a two year old site for which no promotion was undertaken with the past year. We wanted a stable small business site to create the purest environment possible for the test. We also felt the site was representative of the size and scale of a site that might find itself the target of a malicious negative SEO campaign. It's unfortunate, but the precise timing of the ranking drop leads to a reasonable conclusion that Negative SEO works, at least in a small business environment. Larger sites/Branded sites would be less likely to be effected by negative SEO, we surmise. While the drop in our test wasn't massive, we didn't have to spend that much to impact rankings. Note that our test site did not suffer in the rankings for other keywords--some low-value terms even rose. T TASTY PLACEMENT Study by TastyPlacement, Ic., a Search Engine Optimization and Digital Design Co. Full study available at tastyplacement.com %23 Testing ~NEGATIVE SEO~ 1s Negative SEO Real? our evil plan: take a perfectly good site and see if we can trash its rankings about our test We set out to test if we could harm a website's Google rankings by applying "negative SEO" techniques: we took a high-ranking, very typical local business site (pool-cleaning-houston.com) and pointed thousands of low-quality paid links at the site and measured its SERP positions for its primary keyword phrase over several weeks. Four weeks and $45 dollars later, we succeeded in knocking our site off the front page of search results. Read on for the details. STARTING POSITION for kayword "pool claning houston" %23 april 30, 2012 Our Weapon: Junk Links 7,000 45,000 4,000 forum profile links blog comment links trashy sidebar links May 1through May 16, 2012 THE DATA: position ingoogle search for phrase "pool cening houston" google position 45k comment links 4k sidebar links #2 #3 #3 7k forum links drop to page 2! 10 #11 12 13 14 final position! #14 4/30 5/7 5/14 5/21 5/28 date TOTAL COST $45 Background & Conclusion Our test site (we own it) is a two year old site for which no promotion was undertaken with the past year. We wanted a stable small business site to create the purest environment possible for the test. We also felt the site was representative of the size and scale of a site that might find itself the target of a malicious negative SEO campaign. It's unfortunate, but the precise timing of the ranking drop leads to a reasonable conclusion that Negative SEO works, at least in a small business environment. Larger sites/Branded sites would be less likely to be effected by negative SEO, we surmise. While the drop in our test wasn't massive, we didn't have to spend that much to impact rankings. Note that our test site did not suffer in the rankings for other keywords--some low-value terms even rose. T TASTY PLACEMENT Study by TastyPlacement, Ic., a Search Engine Optimization and Digital Design Co. Full study available at tastyplacement.com %23 Testing ~NEGATIVE SEO~ 1s Negative SEO Real? our evil plan: take a perfectly good site and see if we can trash its rankings about our test We set out to test if we could harm a website's Google rankings by applying "negative SEO" techniques: we took a high-ranking, very typical local business site (pool-cleaning-houston.com) and pointed thousands of low-quality paid links at the site and measured its SERP positions for its primary keyword phrase over several weeks. Four weeks and $45 dollars later, we succeeded in knocking our site off the front page of search results. Read on for the details. STARTING POSITION for kayword "pool claning houston" %23 april 30, 2012 Our Weapon: Junk Links 7,000 45,000 4,000 forum profile links blog comment links trashy sidebar links May 1through May 16, 2012 THE DATA: position ingoogle search for phrase "pool cening houston" google position 45k comment links 4k sidebar links #2 #3 #3 7k forum links drop to page 2! 10 #11 12 13 14 final position! #14 4/30 5/7 5/14 5/21 5/28 date TOTAL COST $45 Background & Conclusion Our test site (we own it) is a two year old site for which no promotion was undertaken with the past year. We wanted a stable small business site to create the purest environment possible for the test. We also felt the site was representative of the size and scale of a site that might find itself the target of a malicious negative SEO campaign. It's unfortunate, but the precise timing of the ranking drop leads to a reasonable conclusion that Negative SEO works, at least in a small business environment. Larger sites/Branded sites would be less likely to be effected by negative SEO, we surmise. While the drop in our test wasn't massive, we didn't have to spend that much to impact rankings. Note that our test site did not suffer in the rankings for other keywords--some low-value terms even rose. T TASTY PLACEMENT Study by TastyPlacement, Ic., a Search Engine Optimization and Digital Design Co. Full study available at tastyplacement.com %23 Testing ~NEGATIVE SEO~ 1s Negative SEO Real? our evil plan: take a perfectly good site and see if we can trash its rankings about our test We set out to test if we could harm a website's Google rankings by applying "negative SEO" techniques: we took a high-ranking, very typical local business site (pool-cleaning-houston.com) and pointed thousands of low-quality paid links at the site and measured its SERP positions for its primary keyword phrase over several weeks. Four weeks and $45 dollars later, we succeeded in knocking our site off the front page of search results. Read on for the details. STARTING POSITION for kayword "pool claning houston" %23 april 30, 2012 Our Weapon: Junk Links 7,000 45,000 4,000 forum profile links blog comment links trashy sidebar links May 1through May 16, 2012 THE DATA: position ingoogle search for phrase "pool cening houston" google position 45k comment links 4k sidebar links #2 #3 #3 7k forum links drop to page 2! 10 #11 12 13 14 final position! #14 4/30 5/7 5/14 5/21 5/28 date TOTAL COST $45 Background & Conclusion Our test site (we own it) is a two year old site for which no promotion was undertaken with the past year. We wanted a stable small business site to create the purest environment possible for the test. We also felt the site was representative of the size and scale of a site that might find itself the target of a malicious negative SEO campaign. It's unfortunate, but the precise timing of the ranking drop leads to a reasonable conclusion that Negative SEO works, at least in a small business environment. Larger sites/Branded sites would be less likely to be effected by negative SEO, we surmise. While the drop in our test wasn't massive, we didn't have to spend that much to impact rankings. Note that our test site did not suffer in the rankings for other keywords--some low-value terms even rose. T TASTY PLACEMENT Study by TastyPlacement, Ic., a Search Engine Optimization and Digital Design Co. Full study available at tastyplacement.com %23 Testing ~NEGATIVE SEO~ 1s Negative SEO Real? our evil plan: take a perfectly good site and see if we can trash its rankings about our test We set out to test if we could harm a website's Google rankings by applying "negative SEO" techniques: we took a high-ranking, very typical local business site (pool-cleaning-houston.com) and pointed thousands of low-quality paid links at the site and measured its SERP positions for its primary keyword phrase over several weeks. Four weeks and $45 dollars later, we succeeded in knocking our site off the front page of search results. Read on for the details. STARTING POSITION for kayword "pool claning houston" %23 april 30, 2012 Our Weapon: Junk Links 7,000 45,000 4,000 forum profile links blog comment links trashy sidebar links May 1through May 16, 2012 THE DATA: position ingoogle search for phrase "pool cening houston" google position 45k comment links 4k sidebar links #2 #3 #3 7k forum links drop to page 2! 10 #11 12 13 14 final position! #14 4/30 5/7 5/14 5/21 5/28 date TOTAL COST $45 Background & Conclusion Our test site (we own it) is a two year old site for which no promotion was undertaken with the past year. We wanted a stable small business site to create the purest environment possible for the test. We also felt the site was representative of the size and scale of a site that might find itself the target of a malicious negative SEO campaign. It's unfortunate, but the precise timing of the ranking drop leads to a reasonable conclusion that Negative SEO works, at least in a small business environment. Larger sites/Branded sites would be less likely to be effected by negative SEO, we surmise. While the drop in our test wasn't massive, we didn't have to spend that much to impact rankings. Note that our test site did not suffer in the rankings for other keywords--some low-value terms even rose. T TASTY PLACEMENT Study by TastyPlacement, Ic., a Search Engine Optimization and Digital Design Co. Full study available at tastyplacement.com %23