John Mueller from Google advises site owners not to be overly concerned about negative SEO attacks involving malicious backlinks.
A blogger contacted Mueller on Twitter, worried about their website being “backlink bombed.” The site’s backlink profile skyrocketed from 2,000 referring domains to over 12,000 within a month. Unless one of their articles went viral and garnered thousands of natural links, this is likely an attempt at negative SEO.
Someone is probably generating a large number of low-quality links to harm the site’s reputation or even trigger a Google penalty. The site owner has been disavowing the domains but finds it challenging to keep up with the influx of new links.
The Savvy Couple tweeted Mueller asking for guidance, explaining their situation and difficulty in managing the disavowals. Despite their concern, Mueller’s advice is simple: do nothing.
“I’d ignore them,” says Mueller. Google has systems designed to disregard these types of links, making the effort to build them futile.
Mueller emphasized that someone is wasting their time on something that Google’s systems are well-equipped to ignore.
If you encounter a similar situation, Mueller suggests not wasting your own time trying to combat all the malicious links. Google recently released a 30-page white paper detailing the systems Mueller mentions, reflecting how proficient Google has become at protecting its search index from spammy tactics intended to manipulate search rankings.
You can find a brief summary of the 30-page document elsewhere.
