Negative SEO refers to deliberate attempts to harm a competitor’s search rankings, typically by pointing large volumes of low-quality or spammy backlinks at their site. Other tactics include scraping and republishing their content to trigger duplicate-content filters, triggering fake spam reports, or submitting false removal requests for their pages. The effectiveness of negative SEO through link-based attacks has diminished since Google’s Penguin algorithm became better at discounting unnatural links rather than penalising recipients. However, the risk is not zero, particularly for smaller sites. Victims can use the disavow file in Google Search Console to ask Google to ignore specific links. Documenting your backlink profile regularly makes it easier to detect unusual spikes.