Negative SEO: A Practical Guide to Detection & Prevention in 2025

Negative SEO doesn’t start with a warning. Your rankings drop, traffic dips, and everything feels off, but your SEO checklist looks clean.

In 2025, these silent attacks are still hitting legit sites. And most people don’t realize it until they’ve already lost ground.

This guide walks you through exactly how to spot the signs early, stop the damage, and protect your site from future attacks—without second-guessing your entire strategy.

What is negative SEO, and why does it matter?

Negative SEO (or adverse SEO) refers to malicious tactics others use to intentionally harm your website’s search engine rankings.

These tactics include building toxic backlinks, stealing or duplicating your content, submitting fake copyright complaints, or even hacking your site. The goal is to trigger Google penalties or algorithmic demotions to make your site look spammy.

But do negative SEO tactics still matter in 2025?

Yes, because Google’s systems are more aggressive than ever regarding link quality and content trustworthiness. A sudden spike in bad links or duplicate content issues can signal manipulation. 

If Google flags your site, it doesn’t wait around—it drops your rankings.

Negative SEO isn’t just theory. It’s been used against affiliate marketers, SaaS blogs, ecommerce brands, and even local businesses. And with cheap black hat tools still floating around online, anyone can launch an attack in minutes.

That’s why understanding adverse SEO and how to respond fast is non-negotiable if you care about your organic visibility.

8 common types of negative SEO attacks

Understanding the specific tactics used by malicious actors helps you protect your website effectively. Here are the eight most common negative SEO attacks you might encounter:

1. Hacking and code injection

Site security breaches remain one of the most devastating negative SEO attacks. Attackers gain unauthorized access to your website infrastructure to inject harmful code or hidden links.

This malicious code often creates doorway pages filled with spam content or redirects to suspicious websites. Hackers might also insert invisible text loaded with inappropriate keywords to trigger Google penalties.

Once compromised, your site might be flagged for malware by Google Safe Browsing, resulting in those alarming “This site may harm your computer” warnings that decimate user trust and traffic.

2. Link removal scams

These attacks involve competitors impersonating you through fake emails to contact webmasters hosting your valuable backlinks. The perpetrators request the removal of these legitimate links, claiming they violate guidelines or were placed without permission.

Your backlink profile weakens as these valuable quality links disappear, often without your knowledge, until rankings begin to drop.

3. Malicious link-building

Perhaps the oldest negative SEO tactic, this attack involves building thousands of low-quality, spammy links to your website. These toxic backlinks typically come from link farms, pornography sites, gambling pages, or known spam networks.

The goal behind this type of attack is to trigger Google penalties by making your backlink profile appear manipulative. Although Google has improved at identifying these attacks, an overwhelming volume of toxic links can still harm your site’s reputation.

4. Content scraping and duplication

Content theft occurs when competitors automatically copy your content and republish it across multiple domains. Because search engines penalize duplicate content, your original material might be flagged as the copy rather than the source.

As a result, your carefully created content loses ranking power and organic visibility. Some scrapers may even add spammy links or modify your content slightly to avoid detection.

5. Fake reviews and impersonation

For businesses relying on local SEO, fake negative reviews can be particularly damaging. Competitors might orchestrate false complaint campaigns across Google Business Profile, Yelp, and industry-specific platforms.

Similarly, brand impersonation on social media creates fake accounts mimicking your business that post inappropriate content or provide misleading information. Both tactics undermine trust and directly impact local search visibility.

6. Smear campaigns and false claims

These sophisticated attacks involve creating content specifically designed to damage your reputation. This might include setting up counterfeit websites, publishing false information, or creating negative content designed to rank for your brand name plus terms like “scam” or “fraud.”

Such campaigns aim to control the narrative around your brand in search results, pushing potential customers away before they even reach your site.

7. Hotlinking and bandwidth theft

Hotlinking occurs when external websites display your images or videos while loading them directly from your server. Beyond the obvious copyright violations, this practice effectively steals your bandwidth and server resources.

Extensive hotlinking for smaller websites with limited hosting plans can significantly slow performance or even exceed bandwidth limits, creating poor user experiences that search engines penalize.

8. Server overload via hotlinking

This tactic specifically targets your server infrastructure through massive-scale hotlinking. By embedding your resources on high-traffic websites or forums, attackers can overwhelm your servers, causing slowdowns or complete outages.

Since page speed and reliability are critical ranking factors, these performance issues directly impact your search visibility. Plus, repeated downtime can trigger Google’s quality algorithms to view your site as unreliable.

Recognizing these attack patterns early makes the difference between minor inconvenience and major ranking disasters. Next, we’ll explore how to detect when your site is under a negative SEO attack.

How to report negative SEO and identify attacks

Detecting negative SEO attacks early helps minimize damage to your rankings and reputation. By monitoring your site regularly, you can spot suspicious activities before they seriously impact your search visibility.

1. Check for sudden ranking drops

Unexpected ranking decreases often signal a negative SEO attack. First, verify that your rankings have actually fallen by using incognito mode to search for your target keywords. This eliminates personalized results that might skew your perception.

For more reliable data, use Google Search Console’s Performance report to track your ranking positions over time. If you notice ranking drops affecting specific sections of your site, this could indicate a targeted attack.

For a quicker analysis, you can also use Writesonic’s SEO AI agent through a query asking to provide the ranking history for a particular page or keyword:

When investigating ranking drops, always compare them against known Google algorithm updates to determine whether the changes are due to an attack or simply algorithm adjustments.

2. Monitor backlink profile changes

Your backlink profile is often the primary target in negative SEO attacks. You can use Writesonic’s site audit tool to identify toxic links. 

Pay particular attention to:

• Unusual spikes in low-quality backlinks.
• Lost valuable backlinks from authoritative sites.
• Links from irrelevant or suspicious domains.

You can also use the SEO AI agent to track changes to your backlink profile, including both gained and lost links. This helps you quickly determine if someone is building harmful links to your site or requesting the removal of your valuable backlinks.

3. Look for duplicate content issues

Content scraping is where your content is copied and published elsewhere, which can trigger duplicate content issues that hurt your rankings. Google defines duplicate content as content that “either completely matches other content or is appreciably similar”.

To identify duplicate content problems:

1. Check Google Search Console for duplicate content warnings.
2. Perform “site:” searches in Google to spot indexing issues.
3. Search for unique phrases from your content in quotation marks to find copies.

Data shows that 54% of businesses lose 6% of their earnings due to content scraping.

4. Track website performance metrics

Regularly monitor your website’s technical health, as negative SEO attacks often target site performance. Hotlinking attacks, where others embed your images while loading them from your server, can drain bandwidth and slow your site.

Keep an eye on:

• Page load time (visible in Google’s Page Speed Insights)
• Server response times
• Crawl stats in Google Search Console
• HTTP status codes

Core Web Vitals metrics—including Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift—have become critical ranking factors and should be monitored closely.

5. Track brand mentions and sentiment

Smear campaigns and fake reviews are another form of negative SEO attacks. Monitor online mentions of your brand using social monitoring tools.

These tools track brand mentions across the web, estimate media coverage value, and help identify mentions with negative sentiment. You can set up email notifications for digests and alerts to quickly react to unusual mention spikes or particularly harmful content.

By proactively monitoring what people say about your brand online, you can quickly address potential reputation damage before it affects your rankings.

How to protect your website from negative SEO

1. Set up alerts in Google Search Console

Google Search Console offers essential monitoring capabilities to catch a potential negative SEO attack. Here’s how to configure alerts:

1. Access your Google Search Console account and navigate to the “User settings” icon.
2. Select “Email preferences” to customize your notification settings.
3. Ensure “Enable notification by email” is checked to receive critical alerts about security issues, manual actions, and significant changes in performance. 

Focus primarily on alerts for security issues, manual actions, and sudden traffic changes, as these often signal negative SEO attacks. If you’re managing multiple properties, remember that email preferences apply across all sites.

2. Track your backlink profile regularly

Your backlink profile is one of the easiest targets for a negative SEO attack. If toxic links start piling up and you don’t catch them in time, your rankings could take a serious hit.

This is where Writesonic’s SEO AI Agent comes in. It automatically monitors your backlink profile for any signs of suspicious activity—no manual digging required. 

The tool flags sudden spikes in spammy domains, unusual anchor text patterns, and even loss of high-authority links, so you can act fast before Google does.

Make sure to:

• Recrawl your backlink data weekly
• Watch for sudden jumps in low-quality backlinks
• Investigate any lost links from strong referring domains
• Review anchor text clusters that look off or unnatural

3. Build a positive SEO foundation

A strong SEO foundation acts as natural protection against many negative SEO tactics. By focusing on key areas such as technical SEO, content quality, backlink diversity, and site security, you can enhance your website’s resilience against malicious activities.

Technical SEO: Ensure your site is crawlable and error-free

A well-structured website facilitates better indexing by search engines and reduces vulnerabilities. Key practices include:

• Implementing a clean URL structure
• Ensuring mobile responsiveness
• Optimizing site speed
• Fixing crawl errors and broken links
• Utilizing schema markup for enhanced search listings

Regular SEO audits using tools like Writesonic’s Site Audit Tool can help promptly identify and rectify technical issues.

Content quality: Publish original, valuable content consistently

High-quality content not only engages users but also establishes authority. Strategies to maintain content excellence:

• Conducting thorough research to provide unique insights
• Updating existing content to keep it relevant
• Avoiding duplicate content by using canonical tags
• Incorporating multimedia elements to enhance user experience

Consistent publication of valuable content can deter negative SEO techniques like content scraping.

Backlink diversity: Cultivate a natural and varied backlink profile

A diverse backlink profile signals trustworthiness to search engines. To achieve this:

• Acquire backlinks from various domains and industries
• Balance between dofollow and nofollow links
• Monitor anchor text distribution to prevent over-optimization
• Disavow toxic backlinks promptly using Google Search Console

4. Increase site security

Securing your website protects against unauthorized access and malicious activities. Essential security practices include:

• Using HTTPS to encrypt data transmission
• Regularly updating CMS, plugins, and themes
• Implementing firewalls and security plugins
• Conducting regular security audits and vulnerability assessments

Proactive security measures can prevent negative SEO attacks like hacking and malware injection. To maintain your website security in a fast and systematic manner, Writesonic’s site audit tool can help highlight security issues so you know exactly what needs to be fixed:

By focusing on these areas, you can build a resilient SEO foundation that improves your website’s performance and safeguards against potential negative SEO threats.

5. Report negative SEO attacks to Google

When you identify a negative SEO attack, reporting it to Google properly helps mitigate the damage:

1. Use Google’s Disavow Links tool if you’ve discovered harmful backlinks pointing to your site
2. Create a disavow file listing the problematic domains (not just individual URLs)
3. Submit the file through Google Search Console, adding comments explaining the situation

6. Contact webmasters for link removals

For toxic backlinks, removal at the source is more effective than simply disavowing:

1. Identify the website owner through “Contact us” links or WHOIS searches
2. Send a professional, non-threatening removal request explaining the situation
3. Include specific details: the page containing the link and the target page on your site

A well-crafted removal request increases your chances of success. Avoid threats about penalties or legal action, which typically backfire. Instead, focus on courtesy and clarity. If the webmaster is unresponsive, contact their hosting company as an alternative approach.

Tools to monitor and prevent negative SEO

You don’t need a dozen tools to stay ahead of a negative SEO attack. Google’s free suite and Writesonic’s SEO tools give you everything you need to track, detect, and respond—without bloating your workflow.

Here’s what to use and how.

1. Google Search Console (GSC)

This is your first line of defense. GSC helps you monitor site performance, alerts you to major issues, and provides visibility into how Google sees your site.

What to check regularly:

• Manual actions: You’ll get an alert if Google flags your site for unnatural links or policy violations.
• Security issues: See if your site has been compromised or flagged for malware.
• Performance report: Spot deindexed pages or crawl issues caused by injected redirects or code changes.
• Links report: Detect sudden spikes in backlinks from suspicious domains.

2. Google Analytics (GA4)

GA4 won’t detect negative SEO directly, but it helps you catch red flags early.

Here’s what to look for:

• Sudden drop in organic traffic: If your SEO traffic tanks without any changes on your side, it could be due to a negative SEO hit.
  
• Referral spam: See if junk traffic is coming from shady sources—it may signal a coordinated link attack.
  
• Bounce rate anomalies: Unexpected user behavior may be tied to malicious redirects or bad site performance caused by hotlinking.

Combine this with GSC insights to spot patterns and isolate the root cause.

3. Writesonic SEO AI Agent

The SEO AI Agent gives you real-time protection against negative SEO by pulling live data from Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Semrush, WordPress, and open web crawls—all in one dashboard.

It automatically tracks toxic backlinks, spammy anchor patterns, and lost high-authority links. You’ll get smart alerts before those changes impact your rankings.

What makes it stand out:

• Seamless integrations with GSC, Semrush, Ahrefs, and WordPress so you don’t have to juggle between tools.
• Data-driven insights with recommended actions.
• SEO and SERP monitoring using live web data.
• End-to-end SEO workflow automation, saving you hours of manual work. 

If GSC shows you symptoms, this SEO AI agent shows you the solution—fast.

Is negative SEO illegal, and what are your legal options?

Negative SEO isn’t illegal by definition, but specific tactics used in an attack can cross legal lines. For example, building spammy links to harm your site is shady, but not always criminal. 

But suppose someone hacks your site, submits fake DMCA takedowns, impersonates your business, or floods you with fake reviews. In that case, those actions may fall under computer fraud, defamation, or identity theft, depending on where you’re based.

Here’s how to respond when it goes beyond SEO:

1. Document everything

Take screenshots, export backlink reports, log timestamps, and save email headers. You’ll need a paper trail if you escalate.

2. File a complaint with Google

If you’re being impersonated, targeted with fake takedown notices, or bombarded with fraudulent reviews, use Google’s spam report or fake review flagging tools. For malicious links, submit a disavow file through Google Search Console.

3. Report cybercrimes to authorities

If your site is hacked or content is stolen and distributed, you can report it to local law enforcement or cybercrime agencies. In the US, that includes the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

4. Consider legal action

If you’ve identified the attacker (e.g., through IP tracking or email headers), consult an attorney.

You may have grounds for a cease-and-desist letter, lawsuit for defamation, or legal takedown under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) or Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Negative SEO isn’t just annoying—it can wreck months of hard work if you miss the signs.

You need more than just data. You need a system that spots attacks early and tells you exactly what to fix.

That’s what Writesonic’s SEO AI Agent does—live web crawling, instant alerts, smart recommendations, and full integration with your existing stack.

FAQs

1. Is negative SEO illegal?

Not all negative SEO is illegal, but some tactics definitely cross the line. Things like spammy backlink building or content scraping might not break laws, but hacking, fake DMCA notices, impersonation, or posting defamatory reviews can be considered cybercrime or fraud in many countries. 

If you suspect something criminal, document it and consider reporting it to legal authorities or filing a complaint with Google.

2. What is bad SEO vs good SEO?

Good SEO follows search engine guidelines—like publishing original content, earning links naturally, and improving site experience. 

Bad SEO (also called black hat SEO) tries to manipulate rankings through shortcuts, like keyword stuffing, cloaked redirects, link spam, or duplicate content. Bad SEO can work short term, but usually leads to penalties, ranking drops, or getting deindexed.

4. What are the four types of SEO?

The four main types of SEO are:

• On-page SEO: Optimizing content, meta tags, and internal links on your site
  
• Off-page SEO: Building authority through backlinks and brand mentions
  
• Technical SEO: Improving site speed, crawlability, structure, and indexation
  
• Local SEO: Optimizing your online presence for location-based searches (e.g., Google Maps, local listings)

Each plays a different role in helping your site rank and stay visible.

5. What is reverse SEO?

Reverse SEO is the practice of pushing down negative or unwanted content in search results. Instead of improving your own page’s rank, the goal is to suppress harmful pages, like bad press, negative reviews, or outdated links, by outranking them with more relevant or optimized content. It’s often used in online reputation management.

Saloni Kohli

Content Strategist

Saloni Kohli is a Content Strategist with over four years’ experience in B2B SaaS content marketing and SEO. She has shaped and executed end-to-end content strategies—ranging from editorial planning and long-form thought leadership to conversion-focused landing pages and email campaigns. At Writesonic, Saloni combines creativity with data-driven insights to elevate brand voice, drive organic growth, and maximize audience engagement.