Over the years, Google has gotten pretty good about making negative SEO very hard to do. In order to bomb a competitor, you have to spend thousands of dollars to do your negative SEO attack at a scale that just doesn't make sense for a business's resources. Here are some negative SEO attacks that take a significant amount of resources to implement:
- Canonicals: Using a toxic website to target a competitor. In order to do this type of attack, the person partaking in negative SEO would need to acquire a toxic domain and basically rebuild the target website.
- Backlink Bombing: You need thousands of URLs and backlinks in order to toxically target a competitor's website, and Google ignores most of them anyway.
- CTR Manipulation: You're going to have to do this at a scale that will wreck your marketing budget.
Essentially, negative SEO requires a huge scale to be successful, and most webmasters won't ever have to worry about a competitor doing something that hurts them. However, during an audit we recently discovered a type of negative SEO that could potentially hurt a website.
What Is Negative SEO?
Negative SEO is an attack on your website by a competitor, or by someone who wants to use your website in an illicit manner to increase rankings on their site or do things like mine cryptocurrency. The goal is to make Google see your site as spammy or untrustworthy.
Note: We do NOT do negative SEO. We help clients discover if they are victims of an SEO attack if they find that a drop in traffic is not easily explainable. We are forensic SEO experts and can help uncover if someone is tinkering with your website.
Unfortunately, in most negative SEO attacks, you will never be able to find out who is doing the attack on your website. There are certain things that you can do, however, in order to protect your website from a negative SEO attack.
The DMCA Negative SEO Bomb
We discovered this type of negative SEO attack when we were analyzing some sites in our portfolio. We noticed a traffic drop of about 35% on the website.
What caused the decline in traffic? We started looking at all the possible culprits. We didn't see any bad backlinks in the Search Console report. We did see some interesting things in Moz. We saw that there was a site that was 301 redirecting to our client's website. We noticed that the redirecting website was listed in the Lumen Database as part of a DMCA notice.
How Does a DMCA Website Linking To Yours Hurt?
If a website with a DMCA takedown notice simply links to your website, the damage is likely negligible. If the website is 301 redirected to the target website, our theory is that Google may start to associate the target website with what was listed in the DMCA takedown. You might not always see the 301 redirected URL in your Search Console report. You'll see the backlinks to the 301 redirected website in your link report in Search Console, but you'll have to drill down further into the report to see the true target URL.
Here are some of the factors to consider if you suspect a competitor is doing a DMCA bomb on you:
Google receives and acts on DMCA notices, and sites with many valid copyright removal notices can be demoted. If a large number of backlinks or redirects from such a domain start pointing to a competitor, it could create an unwanted association between the two sites.
Additionally, if the redirecting domain has a large number of spammy, low-quality links, a sudden influx of questionable links could warrant a closer look, and in some cases a disavow file. Google’s handling of redirected domains varies.
In many cases, Google does not transfer a penalty directly through a 301 redirect. However, if the redirected domain has a history of duplicate content, piracy, or spam, Google may ignore the redirect altogether, preventing any link equity—whether positive or negative—from being passed on. This is an area where there is little official guidance, so treat these steps as precautions.
How to React To a DMCA Domain Redirect In Negative SEO
1. Monitor Incoming Redirects & Backlinks
- Regularly check your Google Search Console (GSC) > Links section for unexpected referring domains.
- Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, or Majestic to detect redirects and new backlinks.
- Set up Google Alerts for your brand and domain name to get notified of unusual activity.
2. Disavow Suspicious Links
- If toxic links or redirecting domains appear and you believe they are hurting you, submit a disavow file so Google ignores them.
- Google provides a Disavow Tool where you can upload a list of unwanted domains.
3. Report the Redirect to Google
- If a competitor is using malicious redirects, report the activity to Google:
- Report spam and quality issues
- Google's DMCA report form (if your own content is being copied)
4. Strengthen Your Website’s Authority
- A strong, authoritative site is less likely to be negatively affected by spammy redirects.
- Regularly publish high-quality content, earn genuine backlinks, and keep your site useful to signal credibility to Google.
5. Watch Search Console's Security and Manual Actions Reports
- Regularly check the Manual actions and Security issues reports in Google Search Console to ensure your site isn’t flagged.
- Turn on email notifications for your Search Console property so you hear about problems quickly.
6. Use Canonical Tags and Keep Your Site Secure
- Implement self-referencing canonical tags correctly to signal your original content and reduce the impact of duplicate content issues.
- Use HTTPS everywhere, keep software updated, and protect admin logins with two-factor authentication so attackers can't add redirects or spam to your own site.
7. Contact the Hosting Provider of the Redirecting Domain
- If the malicious domain is hosted by a known provider, file an abuse complaint with the host or registrar.
- WHOIS lookup tools like DomainTools Whois can help identify the hosting company and registrar.
8. Legal Actions as a Last Resort
- If the redirect is clearly malicious and intentional, consult a lawyer about potential action under copyright, trademark, or unfair competition laws.
- A lawyer can also send a Cease & Desist letter to the domain owner if their actions are harming your business.