What negative SEO is and is not - Search Engine Land

Today we are starting a six-part series on Negative SEO. The series will be broken into three areas and will show how negative search engine optimization (SEO) has an effect on links, content and user signals. Positive SEO under this broader view would be any tactic performed with the intent to positively impact rankings for a uniform resource locator (URL), and possibly its host domain, by manipulating a variable within the links, content or user signals areas. Negative SEO would be any tactic performed with the intent to negatively impact rankings for a URL, and possibly its host domain, by manipulating a variable within the links, content or user signal buckets. If you can accidentally hurt your rankings by shifting a variable, then it would logically suggest that an external entity shifting that same variable associated with your site could result in a ranking decrease or outright deindexation.