Abbr:
SE - Search Engine
SEE - SE Engineer
Using optics and hunting analogy, researching info is like zooming in into focus your game with a good riflescope. We know --- we think we know from research into this topic on the web --- that top SEs, especially Google, will penalize a site for "spammy" backlinks and reward the site for "quality" backlinks. Looking into and researching this on the web, it looks like there is a general consensus that a penalty when issued is more severe in terms of magnitude and quickness than when it is reward. While a webmaster has control over on-page on-site SEO, outbound links and anchor texts, inbound links --- the sources and anchor texts are not 100% always under the control of the webmaster. So what is stopping a malicious attacker from exploiting this total lack of control for the inbound links? Knowing that the top SEs will penalize your site heavily for spammy backlinks, and that your site could spend months digging out while submitting multiple reconsideration requests, what is stopping the competition from attacking your site with spammy links? Forget the competition for a moment, what if your webmaster inadvertently "brought the spammy links home?"
The point is that this appears to be a big SEO security hole if the information and theories are right of the way analysts think modern top SEs operate: spammy external backlinks will impact your site's reputation negatively much more drastically and quickly than quality external backlinks will affect positively your site. Because the webmaster does not have 100% control over all inbound links, attackers can easily negatively impact a site's reputation without approval or consent of the webmaster. There is no "firewall" or "access control" mechanism that one can think of for the webmaster to put in place to combat this.
Hopefully, SEEs have considered this problem and have solutions. Hopefully, a solution is to totally ignore "spammy" backlinks instead of penalizing for them, unless there is a non-repudiable proof that the webmaster brought the links home to the site.
Have you thought about this yourself? Is there nothing to worry about?
SE - Search Engine
SEE - SE Engineer
Using optics and hunting analogy, researching info is like zooming in into focus your game with a good riflescope. We know --- we think we know from research into this topic on the web --- that top SEs, especially Google, will penalize a site for "spammy" backlinks and reward the site for "quality" backlinks. Looking into and researching this on the web, it looks like there is a general consensus that a penalty when issued is more severe in terms of magnitude and quickness than when it is reward. While a webmaster has control over on-page on-site SEO, outbound links and anchor texts, inbound links --- the sources and anchor texts are not 100% always under the control of the webmaster. So what is stopping a malicious attacker from exploiting this total lack of control for the inbound links? Knowing that the top SEs will penalize your site heavily for spammy backlinks, and that your site could spend months digging out while submitting multiple reconsideration requests, what is stopping the competition from attacking your site with spammy links? Forget the competition for a moment, what if your webmaster inadvertently "brought the spammy links home?"
The point is that this appears to be a big SEO security hole if the information and theories are right of the way analysts think modern top SEs operate: spammy external backlinks will impact your site's reputation negatively much more drastically and quickly than quality external backlinks will affect positively your site. Because the webmaster does not have 100% control over all inbound links, attackers can easily negatively impact a site's reputation without approval or consent of the webmaster. There is no "firewall" or "access control" mechanism that one can think of for the webmaster to put in place to combat this.
Hopefully, SEEs have considered this problem and have solutions. Hopefully, a solution is to totally ignore "spammy" backlinks instead of penalizing for them, unless there is a non-repudiable proof that the webmaster brought the links home to the site.
Have you thought about this yourself? Is there nothing to worry about?
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