Google discredited negative SEO once again. They have disavowed that negative SEO is a major issue for SEOs, publishers, website owners, or Google Search. Google has been telling us not to worry about negative SEO.
What is Negative SEO?
Negative SEO is a set of harmful activities to lower a competitor's rankings in Google search results. These SEO activities are more frequently off-page (e.g., building unnatural backlinks to the site or scraping and reposting its content), but in a few cases, they may also involve hacking the website and modifying its content.
How to Counter Negative SEO?
Don't worry about negative SEO threats, feel free to use the disavow tool. Google didn't build the disavow tool for this purpose, but it can offer solace against negative SEO. As an SEO, you should keep your off-page SEO basics clear and understand how search engines work.
Many people have seen negative SEO extortion emails and serious threats requiring you to pay to get these links removed. Even companies hold clients hostage with such threats. Negative SEO is not new; rather, it's been here for ages, and scammers have been using it for many years.
In 2013, Matt Cutts even addressed the problem, and it has been ongoing since then. Google discredited negative SEO multiple times before. They have been saying not to pay their threats any attention for years. If you are concerned when it comes to links, disavow them. But overall, Google has claimed negative SEO is a waste of time – so don't let it bother you.
In any event, Google's John Mueller disavowed these notions again. He responded on Reddit when someone questioned that Google themselves has told him not to worry about negative SEO tactics.
The person wrote on Reddit,
"Google understands stuff like this and normally disavows them."
Someone then questioned it, saying,
"How? Also, can you share any document where Google has stated this? I haven't been able to find anything on the web so far."
Then John himself replied saying, "It's true."
Many SEOs do not believe it. Still, Google has been saying this for more than a decade now.
There also may be some confusion about negative SEO.
