Negative SEO is a deliberate attempt to damage a competitor’s search rankings, usually by pointing large numbers of spammy links at their site, copying their content, posting fake reviews or interfering with the site itself. It is the reverse of ordinary SEO: instead of improving your own visibility, someone tries to reduce another business’s.
How negative SEO works
The tactics fall into two groups.
Off-site attacks
- Spam link blasts. Thousands of links from hacked sites, link farms or adult and gambling pages, often with exact-match or offensive anchor text, aimed at the target in the hope that Google will penalise it.
- Content scraping. Copying a site’s pages onto other domains so the duplicates compete with the original. Google is usually good at identifying the source, but scraped content can occasionally outrank a young or slow site.
- Fake reviews and listing interference. One-star reviews, public edits that change a business’s phone number or mark it as closed, or duplicate listings that split its signals.
- Fake removal requests. Emails to sites that link to the target, posing as the target and asking for the links to be taken down.
On-site attacks
- Hacking. Injecting spam pages, hidden links or redirects into the site, or adding noindex tags to important pages.
- Server strain. Aggressive crawling or traffic floods that slow the site or knock it offline.
Why it matters
The link-based version is less of a threat than it once was. Google says its systems are built to ignore most spammy links rather than punish the site they point to, and in practice most sudden spikes in junk links change nothing. The more realistic dangers for a UK small business involve things you control: a hacked WordPress site serving pharmacy spam, a Google Business Profile quietly edited by a stranger, or a wave of fake reviews.
The main reason to understand it is diagnosis. When rankings fall, owners often suspect an attack. Usually the cause is a core update, a change on their own site or a stronger competitor. Knowing what genuine negative SEO looks like stops you paying for the wrong fix.
Fake reviews are also a legal matter in the UK. Since April 2025, under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, commissioning or publishing fake consumer reviews has been a banned practice, so keep screenshots and dates of anything suspicious when you report it.
Common mistakes
- Blaming every drop on an attack. Check for algorithm updates, technical changes and new competitors first.
- Disavowing in a panic. Disavowing every link a tool labels toxic can throw away links that were helping. Google recommends the disavow tool mainly when you have a manual action, or know of paid or unnatural links that you or a previous agency built.
- Weak site security. Outdated plugins and shared admin logins are the easiest way in.
- Not watching your Business Profile. Public edits can go live without the owner noticing for weeks.
How to act on it
Verify your site in Google Search Console and keep email alerts on: it reports manual actions and security issues directly. Keep WordPress core, themes and plugins up to date, use two-factor authentication on admin and hosting accounts, and keep off-site backups. Check your Google Business Profile every week for edits and new reviews, and report fake ones through the profile.
If you see a sudden rush of spammy links, record it and watch rankings rather than reacting straight away. If a manual action appears, or there is clear evidence of harm, a targeted disavow file is the right tool. For copied pages, a copyright removal request through Google’s legal removals form, or to the host, usually works. If you suspect an attack and want it checked properly, an SEO audit separates real problems from coincidence by reviewing links alongside technical and content causes.