Negative SEO Attack: Detection, Defense & Recovery Guide

What Is a Negative SEO Attack?

A negative SEO attack is a deliberate effort by competitors or malicious actors to sabotage your site’s search rankings through toxic backlinks, fake reviews, content theft, or technical exploits. Unlike standard competition, in which brands win through better content, a negative SEO attack aims to destroy your visibility by triggering Google penalties or eroding user trust.

I’ve seen ecommerce brands lose 40-60% of organic traffic overnight because someone flooded their backlink profile with spam domains. The worst part? Most site owners do not realize they are under attack until the damage appears in Search Console or revenue reports. This is not paranoia. It is a documented risk that scales with your success.

How Negative SEO Differs from Standard Competition

Standard SEO competition means brands fight for rankings by publishing better content, earning quality backlinks, and improving user experience. Negative SEO flips this: attackers manipulate Google’s algorithms to punish your site instead of improving their own. They exploit the fact that Google cannot always distinguish between links you built and links someone maliciously pointed at you.

Think of it like this: white hat SEO is winning a race by training harder. Negative SEO is slashing your competitor’s tires before the race starts. One strategy builds long-term equity. The other creates short-term chaos that often backfires on the attacker when Google’s systems catch up.

Why Competitors Turn to These Dirty Tactics

Desperation drives most negative SEO attacks. When competitors cannot outrank you legitimately, some turn to black-hat services advertised on forums and dark corners of Reddit. I’ve tracked discussions where site owners openly ask “how to do negative seo” or debate whether to buy negative seo services targeting rivals.

The second driver is perceived anonymity. Attackers believe they can hide behind proxy tools and offshore link farms. They are wrong. Google’s spam detection has improved dramatically, and most attacks leave digital fingerprints. Still, the illusion of risk-free sabotage tempts unethical operators who prioritize quick wins over sustainable growth.

Real Impact: Traffic Drops, Penalties, and Lost Sales

A negative SEO attack hits your revenue directly. Sudden ranking drops mean fewer product page visits, abandoned carts, and lost customers who find competitors instead. For a seven-figure ecommerce brand doing $2M annually, a 50% traffic drop for three months equals roughly $250K in lost sales while you diagnose and recover.

Beyond traffic, attacks damage brand reputation. Fake negative reviews on Google Business Profile or Yelp erode consumer trust. Scraped content creates duplication issues that confuse search engines about which version to rank. Malware injections can get your site blacklisted entirely, destroying years of SEO equity in hours.

9 Common Types of Negative SEO Attacks

Link Spam and Malicious Backlinks

Attackers use automated tools to create thousands of spammy backlinks from low-quality directories, adult sites, or hacked domains. Google’s Penguin algorithm penalizes unnatural link patterns, and while the system has improved at ignoring obvious spam, massive sudden link velocity still triggers manual reviews. The goal: make your backlink profile look manipulative so Google demotes your rankings.

Content Scraping and Duplication

Competitors or bots copy your product descriptions, blog posts, and category pages, then republish them across dozens of scraper sites. This creates duplication issues. If Google cannot determine the original source, it may rank the stolen version higher or suppress all versions. Ecommerce brands with unique product content are prime targets because their pages have commercial value.

Site Hacking and Malware Injection

Technical attacks exploit security vulnerabilities to inject malicious code, redirect pages to spam sites, or plant malware that triggers Google Safe Browsing warnings. Once flagged, browsers display scary “This site may harm your computer” messages that obliterate conversion rates. Recovery requires cleaning the infection, patching vulnerabilities, and requesting Google’s security review.

Fake Reviews and Smear Campaigns

Attackers post fabricated one-star reviews on Google Business Profile, Yelp, Trustpilot, or Amazon. They claim fake experiences with shipping delays, defective products, or poor service. Even if you report them, platforms often take weeks to investigate. Meanwhile, your average rating drops, deterring new customers who trust reviews more than brand messaging.

Click Fraud and Bounce Rate Manipulation

Bots or click farms repeatedly visit your site, immediately bounce, and skew engagement metrics. While Google claims bounce rate is not a direct ranking factor, sustained patterns of poor user signals can indirectly affect rankings. More damaging: click fraud on paid ads drains your budget without generating real leads, forcing you to pause campaigns while under organic attack.

Hotlinking and Server Overload

Attackers embed your images or videos on hundreds of external sites, creating hotlinks that consume your bandwidth. At scale, this can slow your site or crash servers during traffic spikes. Slow page speed hurts rankings and user experience. Some attackers combine this with DDoS attempts to make your site intermittently unavailable, signaling unreliability to search crawlers.

Fake Link Removal Requests

This sneaky tactic involves impersonating your brand and sending removal requests to webmasters who have linked to you legitimately. If they comply, you lose valuable backlinks that took months or years to earn. The attacker hopes to erode your Domain Authority quietly. Most victims do not discover this until they audit lost backlinks and find legitimate sites removed their mentions.

Review Bombing on Google and Yelp

Coordinated groups post dozens of negative reviews within hours, overwhelming your profile with fabricated complaints. This differs from isolated fake reviews because the volume and timing make it obvious manipulation. Platforms eventually remove them, but the damage window can last weeks. Local businesses and ecommerce brands with physical locations suffer the most.

Social Profile Hijacking

Attackers create fake social media accounts mimicking your brand, then post offensive content, scam followers, or spread misinformation. While not a direct SEO attack, this damages branded search results and erodes trust. Customers searching your brand name see the fake profiles ranking alongside your real site, creating confusion that hurts click-through rates and conversions.

How to Detect a Negative SEO Attack Early

Warning Signs: Sudden Traffic and Ranking Drops

The first red flag is unexplained ranking volatility. If your top keywords drop 10+ positions within days and you have not changed anything on-site, investigate immediately. Check Google Search Console for manual action notifications. Look for sudden spikes in referring domains, especially if they are irrelevant or low-quality. Traffic drops without corresponding changes to your content or technical setup signal external interference.

Essential Tools: Google Search Console and Backlink Monitors

Google Search Console is your first line of defense. Check the Links report weekly for unusual referring domain growth. Set up email alerts for manual actions, security issues, and coverage errors. Pair this with backlink monitoring tools that track new links daily. When I audit sites under attack, I typically find 200-500 new toxic domains that appeared within a two-week window, something weekly checks would catch early.

For ecommerce brands, monitor branded search volume in Google Trends. Sudden drops in brand searches combined with ranking declines often indicate reputation attacks or fake review campaigns driving customers away. Cross-reference this data with Google Business Profile insights to spot review bombing patterns.

Advanced Detection: Negative SEO Checkers and AI Alerts

Specialized negative seo checker tools automate monitoring by scanning for toxic backlinks, content duplication, and malware daily. They alert you to anomalies before they compound. The limitation: most tools react to attacks already in progress. They cannot predict or prevent the initial strike.

This is where always-on AI monitoring changes the game. We built AEO Engine to track not just backlinks but entity mentions, citation patterns, and sentiment shifts across platforms such as Reddit, Quora, review sites, and AI answer engines. When someone starts a smear campaign or plants fake reviews, our system flags the pattern within hours, not weeks. For brands in our Industries We Support portfolio, this early detection has prevented attacks from escalating into penalties.

Reddit User Stories: Real Detection Experiences

Negative SEO Reddit threads reveal how real site owners discovered attacks. One ecommerce operator noticed 1,200 new backlinks from Russian poker sites overnight. Another found their product descriptions republished on 40 scraper domains within a week. A local service business saw 15 one-star Google reviews posted in 24 hours, all from accounts created that same day.

Step-by-Step Guide to Prevent Negative SEO Attacks

Build a Strong White Hat SEO Foundation

White hat SEO practices create natural immunity to negative attacks. When your backlink profile is dominated by high-authority, editorially earned links, a few hundred spam links barely register. Google’s algorithms weight quality over quantity, so a strong foundation dilutes the impact of toxic links. Focus on earning links from industry publications, partner sites, and customer testimonials. This makes your profile resilient and harder to manipulate.

Document your link-building activities meticulously. Keep records of outreach emails, guest post placements, and partnership agreements. If you ever face a manual review, this documentation proves your links are legitimate, making it easier to disavow only the malicious ones without losing valuable equity.

Set Up Proactive Monitoring with AI Tools

Manual monitoring does not scale. Set up automated alerts for new backlinks, ranking changes, and review postings. Configure Google Search Console to email you immediately about security issues or manual actions. Use backlink tools with daily crawls, not weekly summaries.

For ecommerce brands managing hundreds of products across multiple platforms, AI monitoring is non-negotiable. Our always-on system at AEO Engine tracks entity mentions, citation accuracy, and sentiment shifts in real time. When an attack starts, you get alerted within hours, not after your rankings collapse. This speed advantage is what separates brands that recover quickly from those that lose months of revenue.

Use Google’s Disavow Tool and Review Management

The Disavow Tool is your emergency brake. Create a disavow file listing toxic domains and submit it through Search Console. Update this file quarterly, even without an active attack, to preemptively reject any spam links Google might count against you. Be conservative: only disavow obviously malicious domains. Disavowing legitimate sites by mistake can hurt your rankings.

For review management, claim and verify all your business profiles on Google, Yelp, Facebook, and industry-specific platforms. Enable review notifications so you can respond to fake reviews immediately. Fast responses signal to platforms and customers that you are engaged, making it easier to get fraudulent reviews removed.

Secure Your Site Against Hacking and Scraping

Technical security prevents the most damaging attacks. Use strong passwords, enable two-factor authentication on all admin accounts, and keep your CMS and plugins updated. Install a web application firewall to block malicious traffic. Run weekly malware scans and monitor your site for unauthorized changes.

To prevent content scraping, implement canonical tags on all pages and submit an XML sitemap to Search Console to establish your content as the original source. Use tools that detect scraped content and file DMCA takedown requests immediately. The faster you act, the less duplicate content confuses Google’s indexing.

What to Do If Your Site Faces a Negative SEO Attack: Recovery Playbook

Immediate Response: Audit and Isolate Damage

The moment you suspect an attack, audit your entire digital footprint. Export your backlink profile from Search Console and third-party tools. Sort by date to identify the spike in new links. Check Google Business Profile, Yelp, and social media for fake reviews or hijacked accounts. Run a malware scan and review server logs for unusual traffic patterns. Document everything with screenshots and timestamps. This evidence supports your case when requesting Google reviews or filing reports with review platforms.

Clean Up Backlinks and Content Issues

Create a disavow file listing all toxic domains. Be selective: if a domain looks suspicious, disavow it, yet avoid disavowing borderline legitimate sites without verification. You can remove domains from the file later if you discover they are legitimate.

Upload the file to Google Search Console under the Disavow Links tool. Google will process it within a few weeks, but full recovery can take months. Document every domain you disavow and the reason, so you can track patterns if attacks recur.

Handle Fake Reviews and Reputation Hits

Flag fraudulent reviews immediately on Google Business Profile, Yelp, and other platforms. Most platforms allow you to report reviews that violate guidelines, especially if they come from accounts with no purchase history or suspicious activity patterns. I’ve seen brands recover from review bombing in 30-60 days by persistently reporting violations and responding professionally to every review, including fake reviews.

For social profile hijacking, contact platform support with proof of ownership. Change passwords, enable two-factor authentication, and audit all connected apps. If smear campaigns spread to Reddit or forums, respond once with facts and evidence, then disengage. Public arguments amplify the damage.

Request Google Review and Submit Disavow

After cleaning up what you can, file a reconsideration request if you received a manual penalty. Be specific: list the attack vectors you identified, actions you took, and proof of cleanup. Google appreciates transparency and thoroughness. If you did not receive a manual action but rankings dropped, the disavow file and time will be your primary recovery tools.

Monitor Google Search Console weekly for new penalty notifications. Set up email alerts so you catch any follow-up issues immediately. Recovery timelines vary: minor attacks may resolve in 4-6 weeks, while severe link spam or hacking incidents can take 3-6 months to fully reverse.

Track Recovery Timeline and Metrics

Create a recovery dashboard tracking daily organic traffic, keyword rankings for your top 20 terms, backlink profile health, and conversion rates. Compare weekly data to pre-attack baselines. Recovery rarely follows a straight line. You will see fluctuations as Google recrawls your site and processes your disavow file.

If recovery stalls after 90 days, audit your response. Did you miss a cluster of toxic links? Are scraped content copies still live? We’ve built AI monitoring into AEO Engine specifically to catch these lingering issues that manual audits miss.

Real-World Negative SEO Case Studies from Reddit and Beyond

Ecommerce Brand Hit by Link Spam: Recovery Story

A mid-sized supplement brand saw rankings collapse overnight when 15,000 spammy backlinks appeared from Russian gambling sites. The founder posted on Reddit asking if this was a negative SEO attack or an algorithmic shift. After confirming the links appeared within 48 hours, they exported the full backlink profile, identified 87 toxic domains, and submitted a disavow file within five days.

Recovery took 14 weeks. Traffic dropped 60% initially, then stabilized at 40% down for two months before climbing back. The brand lost approximately $180,000 in revenue during recovery. They now run weekly backlink audits and set up alerts for sudden link velocity spikes. The lesson: speed matters, and patience is mandatory once you have acted.

Review Bombing Nightmare and How It Unraveled

A local service business received 23 one-star Google reviews in 72 hours, all from accounts created that same week with generic names and no other review history. The business owner flagged every review and documented the pattern in a single PDF submitted to Google support. Within 10 days, Google removed 19 of the 23 reviews for violating guidelines.

The remaining four reviews stayed live because they included just enough detail to appear plausible. The owner responded professionally to each, offering to resolve issues privately. Over the next month, the business actively requested reviews from real customers, diluting the fake ones. Their rating recovered from 2.8 to 4.6 stars in 45 days. The attacker was later identified as a competitor who had purchased a review bombing service for $300 on a black-hat forum.

Competitor Confessions: Buying Negative SEO Services

Reddit threads reveal a dark truth: people actually buy negative seo services. One anonymous poster admitted spending $500 to target a competitor with link spam, expecting quick results. Instead, the target recovered within two months while the attacker’s own site got flagged by Google for suspicious outbound link patterns from the same service provider. The confession thread became a cautionary tale about how black-hat tactics backfire.

Another user shared screenshots of Fiverr gigs offering “competitor backlink destruction” for $50-$200. These services promise thousands of toxic links pointed at your rival. Google’s algorithms have evolved to detect these patterns, making such attacks less effective than they were five years ago, but they still cause short-term chaos and force victims to spend time and money on cleanup.

AI-Powered Defenses: Why Agentic SEO Beats Negative Attacks

Always-On AI Monitoring from AEO Engine

Manual audits catch attacks after damage accumulates. We built AEO Engine to monitor backlinks, content scraping, citation accuracy, and brand mentions in real time across Google, Reddit, Quora, and AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Our system flags anomalies within hours, not weeks, so you can respond before rankings tank or revenue drops.

For ecommerce brands and local businesses in our Industries We Support, this means protection extends beyond traditional SEO into AEO, where AI answer engines increasingly drive purchase decisions. If a competitor seeds false information about your brand on Reddit or scrapes your product descriptions, our platform catches it and alerts you immediately.

White Hat AEO: 920% Traffic Growth Without Risks

White hat strategies build durable assets that negative attacks cannot easily destroy. Our clients across Industries We Support see an average 920% lift in AI-driven traffic by focusing on entity clarity, citation monitoring, and community seeding. These tactics create multiple traffic sources, so even if one channel gets hit, your revenue does not collapse.

Agentic SEO combines human strategy with AI execution at scale. While agencies sell hours and retainers, we give you an engine that runs continuously, adapts to algorithm shifts, and detects threats before they escalate. Stop guessing. Start measuring your AI citations and backlink health with systems that work while you sleep.

100-Day Traffic Sprint: Protect and Scale Fast

Our 100-Day Growth Framework builds defense and offense simultaneously. You’ll establish monitoring, clean up existing vulnerabilities, and launch always-on content systems that generate citations and traffic across platforms. We’ve guided 7- and 8-figure brands managing $250M+ in annual revenue through this process.

Speed and agility beat debate and deliberation. If you’re facing a negative SEO attack or want to prevent one, systems plus data plus speed equal the new model. Results over retainers. Traffic Sprint over endless audits. That’s how you win in 2025.

Long-Term Protection Strategy: Building Immunity to Future Attacks

Diversify Traffic Sources to Reduce Vulnerability

Relying solely on Google organic traffic makes you vulnerable. A single negative SEO attack can cut revenue by half if search is your only channel. Smart brands distribute traffic across multiple platforms: Google, AI answer engines, Reddit, TikTok, email, and paid channels. When one source gets hit, the others sustain your business while you recover.

We’ve seen this protection in action. One client faced a link spam attack that dropped their Google rankings by 40%. Because they had built a strong presence on Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Reddit through our AEO strategies, their total traffic only declined 18%. The diversified approach bought them time to clean up the attack without panic-driven decisions that often make recovery harder.

Document Everything: Create an Audit Trail

Keep detailed records of all SEO activities: link-building campaigns, content publishing dates, technical changes, and third-party partnerships. If you face a manual penalty or need to prove your innocence to Google, this documentation becomes your defense. Attackers count on you having poor records, making it hard to distinguish legitimate links from malicious ones.

Set up monthly backlink exports and archive them. Track review posting patterns. Save screenshots of your Search Console data quarterly. This historical record helps you identify attack patterns quickly and provides baseline metrics to measure recovery progress. The brands that recover fastest from negative SEO attacks are those with organized documentation systems already in place.

Build Brand Authority That Cannot Be Faked

Strong brands with established authority weather attacks better than unknown sites. When you have hundreds of genuine customer reviews, a few fake ones barely move your average rating. When your backlink profile includes links from Forbes, industry associations, and major retailers, spam links from poker sites do not trigger penalties.

Invest in building real relationships with industry publications, partners, and customers. Earn media coverage through newsworthy announcements, not paid placements. Create content so valuable that people naturally link to it. This authentic authority creates a buffer that makes negative SEO attacks less effective and easier to recover from when they occur.

Stay Informed on Algorithm Updates and Attack Trends

Google’s spam detection evolves constantly. What worked as a negative SEO tactic in 2020 may be completely ineffective today. Subscribe to industry publications, follow Google Search Central updates, and monitor communities where black-hat tactics get discussed. Understanding current attack methods helps you recognize them early and adjust your defenses accordingly.

We track algorithm changes and attack patterns across our entire client portfolio. When a new negative SEO technique emerges, our AI systems adapt detection parameters immediately. This collective intelligence means brands in our network benefit from insights gathered across dozens of industries and hundreds of attack attempts. Individual site owners cannot match this scale of threat intelligence.

When to Hire Help vs. Handle Recovery Yourself

DIY Recovery Works for Simple Attacks

If you caught the attack early and the damage is limited to a few hundred spam links or a handful of fake reviews, you can likely handle recovery yourself. Use Google Search Console to identify toxic domains, create a disavow file, and submit it. Flag fraudulent reviews through platform reporting tools. Monitor your rankings weekly to confirm recovery is progressing.

DIY makes sense when you have technical skills, time to dedicate to the cleanup, and the attack has not triggered a manual penalty. Budget 10-20 hours for initial cleanup and ongoing monitoring. Document your actions meticulously so you can prove your efforts if Google requests a reconsideration review.

Professional Help for Severe Attacks

Hire experts when the attack is sophisticated: thousands of toxic backlinks, site hacking with malware, coordinated review bombing across multiple platforms, or manual penalties from Google. These scenarios require specialized tools, experience with Google’s reconsideration process, and often legal action to remove defamatory content or pursue attackers.

The cost of professional help ranges from $2,000 to $15,000 depending on attack severity. Compare this to lost revenue during a prolonged DIY recovery attempt. If your site generates $50,000 monthly and traffic drops 50%, three months of struggling through recovery costs you $75,000 in lost sales. Professional help pays for itself by cutting recovery time in half.

AEO Engine: Continuous Protection, Not One-Time Fixes

Traditional agencies charge retainers for manual monitoring that catches attacks weeks late. We built AEO Engine as a productized platform that runs continuously, monitoring backlinks, citations, content scraping, and brand mentions across all major platforms. You get real-time alerts, automated threat detection, and recovery playbooks without paying for human hours.

Our 100-Day Traffic Sprint includes attack prevention as a core component. We establish monitoring systems, clean up existing vulnerabilities, and build diversified traffic sources that reduce your exposure to any single attack vector. This is not a one-time audit. It is an always-on defense system that scales with your growth and adapts to new threats automatically.

The Future of Negative SEO in the AI Era

AI Answer Engines: The New Attack Surface

As ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews drive more purchase decisions, attackers are shifting tactics. Instead of just spamming backlinks, they seed false information on Reddit, Quora, and review sites that AI engines cite as sources. When someone asks ChatGPT “Is Brand X reliable?”, the AI might surface planted negative content, damaging your reputation without touching your website.

This evolution makes traditional SEO defenses insufficient. You need to monitor where AI engines source information and ensure your brand’s entity representation is accurate across all platforms. Citation monitoring becomes as important as backlink monitoring. Brands that ignore this shift will face reputation damage that does not show up in Search Console but destroys conversion rates.

Automated Attacks Will Scale, Detection Must Keep Pace

AI tools make it easier for attackers to generate thousands of fake reviews, scrape content at massive scale, and create sophisticated link spam patterns. The barrier to launching a negative SEO attack keeps dropping. Manual monitoring cannot keep pace with automated attacks that deploy in hours across dozens of platforms simultaneously.

Defense must match offense in automation. Our AI monitoring at AEO Engine tracks hundreds of data points per client: backlink velocity, citation accuracy, sentiment shifts, content duplication, and review patterns. When an attack starts, the system flags it immediately and suggests specific countermeasures. This speed advantage is what separates brands that thrive from those that spend months recovering from preventable damage.

Google Is Improving, But Not Perfect

Google’s spam detection has improved dramatically. The algorithms now ignore most obvious link spam automatically. Manual penalties for negative SEO are rare because Google can usually distinguish between links you built and links someone maliciously pointed at you. Yet edge cases still exist where attacks succeed temporarily, especially when combined with other tactics like content scraping or review bombing.

Do not rely on Google to protect you. Assume attacks will happen and build defenses proactively. The brands that succeed long-term are those with systems in place before they need them, not those scrambling to respond after rankings collapse.

Final Verdict: Protection Over Panic

A negative SEO attack can devastate unprepared brands, but it does not have to destroy your business. The key is early detection through automated monitoring, swift response with documented cleanup, and long-term protection through diversified traffic sources and strong brand authority. DIY recovery works for simple attacks caught early. Severe attacks require professional help to minimize revenue loss.

The traditional agency model cannot deliver the speed and scale needed to defend against modern attacks. Manual audits catch problems weeks late. Retainer-based monitoring drains budgets without guaranteeing results. We built AEO Engine specifically to solve this: always-on AI monitoring that detects attacks within hours, not weeks, combined with actionable recovery playbooks and continuous protection systems.

Stop guessing whether your site is under attack. Start measuring your backlink health, citation accuracy, and brand mentions with systems that adapt to new threats automatically. Our clients across seven- and eight-figure ecommerce brands see 920% average lifts in AI-driven traffic because they focus on building durable assets that negative attacks cannot easily destroy: entity clarity, diversified traffic, and authentic authority.

The future of SEO is agentic: human strategy combined with AI execution at scale. While competitors debate whether negative SEO is real or worry about the next algorithm update, you will have systems running continuously to protect your rankings, monitor your reputation, and grow your traffic across every platform that matters. Speed and agility beat debate and deliberation. Systems plus data plus speed equal the new model. Results over retainers. That’s how you win.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a negative SEO attack?

A negative SEO attack is a deliberate effort by competitors or malicious actors to sabotage your site’s search rankings. They use tactics like toxic backlinks, fake reviews, or content theft to trigger Google penalties and erode user trust. I’ve seen ecommerce brands lose 40-60% of organic traffic overnight from this.

Is negative SEO illegal?

While not always strictly illegal in every jurisdiction, negative SEO tactics are unethical and violate search engine guidelines. Google actively works to detect and penalize such manipulative practices. Attackers often believe they can hide, but Google’s spam detection has improved dramatically.

Does negative SEO still work?

Yes, negative SEO still works, unfortunately. I’ve seen ecommerce brands lose 40-60% of organic traffic overnight due to link spam attacks. While Google’s detection systems are better, malicious actors can still cause significant damage, leading to penalties and lost revenue.

How do attackers perform negative SEO?

Attackers typically execute negative SEO through tactics like flooding a site with thousands of spammy backlinks, scraping content to create duplication issues, or posting fake negative reviews. Some even resort to site hacking or malware injection. These are black-hat methods that aim to manipulate algorithms and harm a competitor.

How can you protect your website from negative SEO?

Protecting your site from negative SEO requires constant vigilance. Regularly monitor your backlink profile for sudden spikes in spammy links and disavow toxic domains through Google Search Console. Also, keep your site secure, monitor reviews, and check for content duplication to catch attacks early.

What are the most common types of negative SEO attacks?

Common negative SEO attacks include link spam, where thousands of low-quality backlinks are pointed at your site, and content scraping, which creates duplication issues. Other tactics involve fake reviews, site hacking, or even manipulating user engagement metrics like bounce rate.