Negative SEO claims are common. Some are real attacks, many are normal link graph noise.
The safest approach is to build a response workflow that is evidence-driven and calm under pressure.
Response workflow
- Confirm the pattern: volume spikes, link-source quality shifts, anchor-text anomalies.
- Segment by risk: spam clusters, scraper mirrors, compromised domains.
- Protect critical pages with stronger internal linking and content freshness.
- Keep technical hygiene clean: canonicals, sitemap quality, redirects, crawl budget control.
- Track recovery by query cohort, not just domain-level metrics.