8 types of negative SEO you should know about

While the likelihood of a targeted negative SEO attack on your website is lower than many blog posts suggest, it is more common than most site owners realize, and the landscape has changed significantly in the last few years.

Over 422,000 websites were hit with some form of negative SEO spam in 2024, according to Search Engine Land's analysis, hinting that these types of attacks are more widespread than many assume. The good news is that Google's spam-detection systems, particularly the AI-powered SpamBrain algorithm, have become dramatically better at automatically identifying and ignoring many attack types. The bad news is that Google's automated defenses cannot fully protect every site in every scenario, especially when attacks are sophisticated, sustained, or involve on-page compromise.

Negative SEO is a collective term for deliberate tactics intended to lower a competitor's search engine rankings by violating Google's guidelines on their behalf. It is sometimes called "black hat SEO" when used offensively. Importantly, negative SEO is not the same as "black hat SEO" that you apply to your own site: the key distinction is that negative SEO is done to a competitor's site, not one's own.

While negative SEO is unlikely to be the first explanation for a sudden ranking drop (algorithm updates, technical site issues, and content quality problems are all more common culprits), understanding these eight types will help you recognize and respond quickly if an attack does occur. The first five are off-page tactics. The final three involve gaining access to your site directly.

For context on what healthy off-page and on-page SEO looks like, see our guide on the difference between on-page and off-page SEO.

Off-page negative SEO (types 1 through 5)

Off-page negative SEO does not require access to your website. These attacks are carried out externally, primarily by manipulating the signals that search engines use to evaluate your site's authority and reputation.

1. Link farms and toxic backlink attacks

Link farms are networks of low-quality, interconnected websites created specifically to build artificial backlinks. In a negative SEO attack, a competitor points large numbers of these toxic links at your domain, attempting to trigger a Google spam penalty by making your backlink profile look manipulative.

The attack typically involves links with identical or suspicious anchor text that is either irrelevant to your site or stuffed with exact-match keywords in a pattern that looks like deliberate manipulation. A sudden spike of hundreds or thousands of links from unrelated domains arriving over a few days is the hallmark signal. Backlink spam remains the most common form of negative SEO, frequently using automated tools to generate link volume at scale.

Google's SpamBrain algorithm is now far better at automatically ignoring most mass spam link attacks without manual intervention. However, in severe cases or when a manual penalty is involved, you may need to act. Google's Disavow Tool in Search Console allows you to submit a list of domains or specific URLs that you want Google to ignore when evaluating your backlink profile. In 2025, the Disavow Tool is considered a last resort rather than a routine action: use it only when you have a manual penalty notification or a sudden, clearly malicious surge of spam links that correlates with a ranking drop. Using it incorrectly can accidentally remove the value of legitimate links.

How to protect yourself: Monitor your backlink profile regularly using Ahrefs, SEMrush, or the Links report inside Google Search Console. Set up alerts for sudden link spikes. If you identify a genuine mass spam attack that correlates with a drop in rankings or a manual penalty notification, compile a disavow file and submit it through Search Console. See our guide on 7 tips to grow quality backlinks for a picture of what a healthy link profile looks like.

2. AI-generated spam content attacks

This is a significantly evolved and newly prominent negative SEO attack type that did not exist at meaningful scale when this article was first written. Attackers now use AI tools to generate large volumes of low-quality content at minimal cost, then publish it across spam networks, guest post farms, and low-authority sites, all linking back to a competitor's domain.

Google's March 2024 spam update and February 2025 update specifically targeted scaled content abuse, expired domain abuse, and site reputation abuse. Sites that were the unwitting target of large-scale AI-generated link spam saw ranking drops as a side effect. Google's own quality rater guidelines now instruct raters to mark mass-produced AI pages with no original content as "Lowest" quality, and SpamBrain is trained to detect the patterns AI content generation tools typically produce.

How to protect yourself: Set up Google Alerts and brand monitoring tools to detect new content appearing across the web that mentions your brand or links to your site. Regularly audit your incoming links for patterns consistent with AI-generated spam (identical phrasing across multiple domains, sudden link surges, links from newly created sites with no legitimate content). Report scaled content attacks through Google's spam report tool.

3. Fake removal requests

All the effort you have spent building quality backlinks could be at risk if a competitor starts sending fake removal requests to webmasters. In this attack, someone impersonates you or claims to represent your site, contacting webmasters to request removal of legitimate links pointing to your website.

This tactic can also involve submitting fraudulent DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices, claiming that content on third-party sites that links to or features your work infringes your copyright. The goal is to get those legitimate, valuable links removed. Because webmasters often comply with removal requests without verifying the requester's identity, this attack can quietly erode a strong backlink profile.

How to protect yourself: Monitor your backlink profile monthly so that any unexpected loss of previously existing links is visible quickly. If you notice legitimate links disappearing, reach out to the webmasters directly to verify whether they received a removal request. Keep records of your link-building outreach so you can distinguish legitimate removals from fraudulent ones.

4. Fake negative reviews

Posting fake negative reviews is an indirect negative SEO tactic with increasingly direct business consequences. A coordinated campaign of fake one-star reviews on your Google Business Profile, Yelp listing, or industry-specific platforms aims to drive down consumer trust, reduce click-through rates from local search results, and signal to search engines that your business is unreliable.

Review deletion activity on Google surged by over 600% between January and July 2025 as Google's Gemini AI-powered moderation systems became significantly more aggressive at detecting fake review patterns, including reviewer account history, review timing, and content similarity signals. This means fake negative reviews are being caught and removed faster than before. But the same system is also occasionally removing legitimate positive reviews as collateral, which means active monitoring of your review profile is essential from both directions.

Google provides a process for reporting fake reviews on your Google Business Profile. Yelp has a dedicated policy for identifying and challenging inappropriate reviews. For other platforms, report directly through their review moderation tools. Beyond reporting, the best long-term defense is a strong volume of legitimate positive reviews that dilutes the impact of any fake negative campaign. See our 11 tips for addressing negative online reviews for guidance on responding professionally to both real and suspected fake reviews.

5. Forced crawling (DDoS-style attacks)

A competitor can use automated bots to crawl your website at extreme volume and speed, deliberately creating a server load that slows or crashes your site. The goal is to prevent Google's own crawlers from accessing your website: if Googlebot repeatedly fails to reach your site, your rankings can drop as a consequence.

This type of attack blurs the line between negative SEO and a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. The SEO-specific version is designed to be just aggressive enough to cause Googlebot access failures without being obvious enough to trigger DDoS protections. DDoS attacks occurred more than 10 million times in 2020 alone and have continued to grow in frequency.

How to protect yourself: Monitor your server response times and traffic patterns through your hosting provider's analytics. A sudden unexplained spike in crawl requests is a warning sign. Web application firewalls (WAFs) such as Cloudflare can rate-limit aggressive bots while allowing legitimate crawlers through. Check your Google Search Console Crawl Stats report for sudden changes in Googlebot's crawl frequency or error rates, which can indicate a forced crawling attack is underway.

On-page negative SEO (types 6 through 8)

On-page negative SEO is harder to execute than off-page attacks because it requires gaining unauthorized access to your website. However, it is also more dangerous when it succeeds, because compromised on-page elements can directly trigger Google penalties or manual actions.

6. Changing your content

Once someone has gained unauthorized access to your website, one of the most damaging things they can do is modify your content in ways that are hard to detect and that Google penalizes heavily.

Spam-like content can be injected and hidden using CSS commands such as display:none or white text on a white background, making it invisible to human visitors but readable by search engine crawlers. This injected content often includes keyword-stuffed text and links to the attacker's sites or third-party spam destinations. Pages can also be modified to redirect visitors (or specifically Googlebot) to the attacker's website or to low-quality spam pages. These redirect-based attacks are particularly dangerous because Google may detect the redirect before you do, and a site that redirects Googlebot to a malicious destination can face immediate deindexation.

How to protect yourself: Conduct regular site audits using tools like SEMrush's Site Audit, Ahrefs Site Audit, or Google Search Console's Security Issues report, which flags hacked content, unusual redirects, and malware. Set up a website monitoring service that alerts you to unexpected page changes. Use strong, unique passwords and two-factor authentication on all CMS and hosting accounts. See our 12-step website security checklist for a comprehensive approach to protecting your site from unauthorized access.

7. Site de-indexing

Your website's robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers which pages they are and are not allowed to access and index. A single line of code in that file, a Disallow: / rule, instructs all search engines to ignore your entire website.

If an attacker gains access to your server and modifies your robots.txt file to block all crawlers, or changes your CMS settings to add a "noindex" directive to your pages, your site can disappear from search results entirely. This type of attack is particularly alarming because it can take effect quickly and the cause is not immediately obvious to a site owner who does not know to check their robots.txt.

How to protect yourself: Check your Google Search Console regularly for coverage errors and index status changes. A sudden drop in the number of indexed pages is a strong signal that something is wrong. Keep backups of your robots.txt file and CMS settings so that unauthorized changes can be quickly identified and reverted. Consider using a file monitoring plugin or service that alerts you when key files (including robots.txt) are modified. For ongoing search performance monitoring, see our guide on how to check your Google search rank for free.

8. Website hacking and security attacks

While not always executed with negative SEO as the stated goal, any unauthorized access to your website creates negative SEO consequences. Google actively monitors the sites it indexes for security issues, and a site identified as hacked, malware-infected, or distributing harmful content faces serious ranking consequences.

Google may add a "This site may be hacked" or "This site may harm your computer" warning to your search result, which dramatically reduces click-through rates and signals distrust to potential visitors. In severe cases, Google can remove the site from its index entirely until the issue is resolved and a reconsideration request is processed. Google Search Console's Security Issues report is the fastest way to find out whether Google has flagged your site for a security problem.

How to protect yourself: Keep your CMS, plugins, and themes updated at all times, since outdated software is the most common attack vector. Use a reputable web application firewall. Install anti-malware scanning software on your hosting environment. Enable two-factor authentication on all administrative accounts. Create regular automated backups stored off-site so that recovery from a hack is fast. Our 12-step website security checklist covers all of these measures in detail.

The most important defense: vigilance and monitoring

The best protection against all eight types of negative SEO is a combination of proactive monitoring and strong site security. No single tool or action covers everything, but the following practices together create a robust early-warning system:

• Monitor your backlink profile monthly using Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Search Console's Links report. Set up alerts for sudden spikes in new referring domains.
• Check your Google Search Console Performance report weekly for unexpected ranking drops, coverage errors, or security warnings.
• Set up Google Alerts for your brand name and domain to catch fake reviews, impersonation, and unauthorized content about your business.
• Conduct a full site audit quarterly to check for injected content, unauthorized redirects, and robots.txt changes.
• Maintain strong account security across your CMS, hosting provider, and domain registrar with unique passwords and two-factor authentication.
• Keep all software, plugins, and themes updated, since outdated components are the most common entry point for on-page attacks.

For further reading, see our guides on the difference between on-page and off-page SEO, 8 steps to create an effective SEO strategy, 13 common SEO mistakes you could be making right now, and our 12-step website security checklist.

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