I always thought Negative SEO was more of a myth or something that Google could easily handle these days. But now in 2025, I’m starting to think otherwise—and I’m wondering if anyone else here is seeing the same. Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a weird spike in spammy backlinks pointing to my site. We’re talking thousands of links from sketchy directories, foreign sites, and even some adult domains. On top of that, the anchor text is completely unnatural—lots of exact-match keywords and random junk phrases. My rankings took a noticeable dip, especially for my top-performing pages. I’m also seeing duplicate versions of my content appearing on shady blogs and scraper sites. It honestly feels like someone is actively trying to hurt my SEO. I’ve started working on a disavow file and keeping an eye on the links, but the situation made me ask the question: Is Negative SEO still a real threat in 2025? Has anyone else experienced something like this recently? Would love to hear if others are dealing with it too—and what steps you’ve taken to recover or prevent further damage. Looking forward to any insights or advice!
I too would love to hear some peoples experiences with regards to this. I have a very new website and discovered that within the first week of buying my domain I had two very fake looking sites back linking my main domain URL, it was listed on a blank web page with thousands of other URL's. I have read and I am sure it is true that Google does allow for a certain number of these fake backlinks and it knows that spammers will add them themselves without the knowledge of website owner. I just wonder at what point Google does start penalising you for fake backlinks.
I dealt with negative SEO a few years ago. For over a year, competitors were building large numbers of links to my website, which held strong rankings in its niche, using various tactics. I talked about it in more detail in this article. Spoiler: not all "bad" backlinks are harmful to your website. But if someone deliberately mimics SEO link building in a certain way, it can wipe out your site’s traffic.
I have encountered many websites experiencing this situation. I've heard that when they rejected links, there were sudden drops in traffic, and when they lifted the rejection, traffic returned. In the work I did on two sites experiencing such attacks, it happened with the link disavowal strategy, especially for +18 and gambling links... But some people also say that Google is aware of the situation; you will read the case studies here and make your own decision.
Well i had some experience in the past with a lot of spamy comments etc but they dont get to the level to affect my website