There's no word for this practice that I'm aware of, so I've coined one - Social Media Poisoning (SMP). The practice involves proactively generating spammy comments, posts, links, etc. from a competitor's domain in order to make bloggers, social media contributors, forum owners, journalists, etc. view that brand in a negative light. I just heard about my first case of it today - wherein a firm was seeking SMM (Social Media Marketing) antagonistically against a competitor. Obviously, I can't discuss the companies involved and the input I provided was to absolutely stay away from the tactic - in my opinion, conducting social media poisoning is putting your brand at greater risk than the brand you're attempting to harm.
Here's some of the potential tactics that a black hat social marketer might engage in:
- Spamming the comments at major blogs like Techcrunch, GigaOm, MattCutts, etc. (BTW - I've heard that once you spam Techcrunch, Mr. Arrington will refuse to mention your site in the future)
- Authoring low quality posts at forums to make it seem as though the brand/website in question has hired forum spammers
- Emailing or even calling major bloggers, press outlets, etc. and trying to pitch a "shill-like" campaign that will receive obvious rejection (and leave a bad aftertaste)
- Sending lots of junky submissions to sites like Reddit, Digg, Netscape, etc. in order to "poison" the admins at those sites against a domain. This is most effective when combined with obvious manipulation (like 50 Digg accounts on the same IP address)
- Sending fake emails requesting paid links or link exchanges or even just begging for links in a very negative fashion to sites in the competitor's industry
There are probably many more heart-wrenchingly spammy methods for conducting SMP, but these were the only ones that were mentioned to me (or that I inferred from the discussion). And, I'm not sharing these to encourage folks to go conduct SMP on their competitors - I'm doing it so owners of blogs, forums, social media sites, etc. can be aware that just because a domain appears to be spamming you doesn't mean they're behind the activity. With the public backlashes against sites that engage in negative practices in social media, it was only a matter of time before black hat players realized they could use the psychology of angry bloggers/site owners to hurt their competition.
Has anyone been a part of a campaign like this (on the receiving end) or seen it conducted against another firm? I have some suspicions about a few of the blog-related emails that I've received in the last couple months (felt that "Ah Ha!" moment when it dawned on me that maybe those emails originated elsewhere), but no direct sources to point to.
In any event, I highly encourage anyone in social media marketing to stay far, far away from this practice. Between the investigatory capacity of IP tracing, email routing & fraud detection and the social world of folks connected to each other across these platforms, exposure is a massive risk. If and when you are discovered, I can only imagine that the backlash will be 10X worse than what you've inflicted on your competitor. Besides which, don't you have productive content, link generation and participatory SMM you could be engaging in? Spend your time elsewhere.
And to bloggers, site owners, and social media admins - watch out - that brand you think is spamming you might be completely innocent - make sure you do your research.
Clearly a crappy thing to do and I suspect this is actually illegal as the spammer would be falsly identifying themselves as an employee or affiliate of the company they are trying to ruin.
Actually, that's an excellent point - I can't imagine that this wouldn't classify as some form of libel, and that an offender could be held financially accountable. It's certainly defamatory and has a pretty clear monetary impact.
Not necessaily - all you have to do is pretend to be someone who is inept at pretending NOT to be someone from the business. You'd never make a claim - just hamhanded links with spammy comments, etc.
There's always been social poisoning. My dry cleaner tells me all the time about how the other cleaner down the street is bad and a front for drug dealers -- obviously not.
They could even throw a rock through their window if they wanted to. But you have to remember, time + effort generally has to be worth the added profit..
The internet didn't really create the action -- it just let it spill over onto the web.
Internet marketing is becomming a dangerous field. Eventually we'll have to all go by double-0 code names.
In the days of LinkMoses, once upon a time there was a service created by the brilliant Scott Bannister called Submit-It. It was useful, clever, and a time saver. And then the spammers found and tried to ruin it. Then the search engines said please do not use automated submission tools and do not submit your site every day. So what did black hats do? They'd submit competitors URLs over and over and over in hopes of pissing off the engines and...poisioning...their competitor's site at that engine.
I share this not just because it was happening all the way back in 1995 or so, but becasue it illustrates the nature of people to try and mis-use any tool so as to do harm to a competitor.
Poisioning is nothing new. Attempted posioning via SM is the natural evolution of online poisoning tactics.
And before that there was even USENET tag-team and forged USENET spam against a competitor.
No matter the method, the timeline is always the same:
1). New online tool/technology is launched
2). People hail it and enjoy using it for legit reasons
3). Spammers find ways to utilize it for the wrong reasons
4). The spam-to-legit ratio shifts to the spammers
5). The tool/technology is effectively rendered useless
6). Repeat...
Hate to be cycnical because it was the coolness of the net that I got hooked on back when you guys were eating gummie-bears, but I have seen this happen over and over since dial up days.
There's a Moores Law, so maybe we need Ward's law, which is...
The more inventive and useful something is, the more likely it is spammers will render it useless over time.
Eric
It is almost as bad as a link snitch
I realize this a competitive world and all...but somehow, many seem to have lost their way when it comes to right and wrong. Who cares about legality? My question is how these people sleep at night.
Rather than worry about the bad, I prefer to just drown out the noise with the good. Commenting on the tactics of the infidels is interesting, but over time, it just detracts from putting my energy into building value and uniqueness...which will pretty much always triumph in the end.
This seems to be the logical progression from posting negative comments about a competitor on forums, message boards, reviews sites like Yelp, etc. You should see the reviews for my apartment complex at ApartmentRatings.com!
The difference, obviously, is that most of the people posting at ApartmentRatings, Yelp, etc are doing so honestly, even if they are posting anonymously. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they aren't pretending to be somebody they're not.
However, if the manager of an competing apartment complex is posting negative comments about another building, then the practice has advanced to SMP. I did see one comment on that site that looked like an employee of the apartment company's attempting to conduct some rudimentary reputation management by adding a positive review, but I don't think that SMP has taken off yet. However, I'd be surprised if it doesn't soon...
Here is the problem (which is actually a good thing) in order to have enough money to be able to invest in such a time and resource intense campaign (how much would charge to do something like that? I bet most search marketers would reject it out of principle so you'd be stuck paying top dollar for bottom dwellers to pick up the project) you would have to be a medium to large size company. If you're a medium to large size company it's going to be very difficult to hide that procedure for very long and the backlash would hurt your brand not to mention make it VERY EASY to get sued.
Even if you were successful at hiding it, you would have to have a very large regular online budget to jusify all that cost that could have been used to build value on your own site / brand. Even if you factor out morality, justifying the ROI on SMP would be very difficult for almost all companies / industries.
If you are a member of syndk8, there is an example of SMP listed in the Digg section...
Good post, but you forgot to mention RSMP (Reverse Social Marketing Poison) where Company A will spam links to its own website and then leak information that their competitor (Company B) was participating in SMP in hopes of destroying the wonderful integrity and reputation of company A.
I'm not even going to go into RSMVPS or RSMPPD as this is a family oriented website.
Now that's just getting really twisted - imagine if the company that did that put just as much effort into promoting their site properly through social media... or better yet, came-up with more compelling content so the social side would look after itself.
thanks for raising the awareness............i guess it all goes back to ethics in business as in life.
Adds a whole new selling point for SEOs offering Reputation Management services, doesn't it :-)
I actually think this is good news for folks like us.
Sure, there is large potential for short term losses if your site is a victim, but the long term return is through the roof. Not only will Google have to update their algorithm to catch up in case this becomes widespread, but after that initial loss, your site has one less competitor, as do your big time SEO firms.
Spam away!
Have there been any legal cases recently that cite libel for similar blogs like this? Have any been successfully taken to court? I would doubt that case law has reached this level yet... but I could be wrong
Megastarmedia.com was "challenged" by competitors using negative and false information about our company.
We have learned that most companies expect to see some negative information on a company online, and that you can never make everyone happy.
Interesting article tho.
sandy
megastarmedia.com
Defiantly something to worry about if you play right. For now, the only way to get out of it is lunching similar attack on your competitor, but can you tell for sure which one was launching the attack? I do believe this birch is a matter of time just as the redirect 302/301 was. (302 redirect one of your new sites to your competitor, submit to Google for 3 days and your competitor site is gone in the supplemental hell. That birch was fixed. Thank God)
Thats a tall order, trying to weed through which is an actual posting and which is not. The ip address left by a commenter can be duped.
I agree. This sounds like a great article topic for YouMOZ: "How to research your comments"...
"Social Media Poisoning (SMP)" - nice creation - I bet it won't be long before it sticks.
There was a good article on Search Engine Roundtable recently that talks about negative SEO - Negative SEO is Possible, Yet Difficult, Says Matt Cutts and Threadwatch (RIP) reiterated the same - Matt Cutts : Google bowling exists
So watch out for both negative SEO and SEM :(
We experienced a form of negative SEO as well a while ago. I really hope this won't be a trend...
I don´t know if the website I´m maintaining is affected by SMP ( great acronym Rand ), but I´ve seen some listings of the domain where SMP could be the reason for. I followed the "Domain name visibility" provided by the Page Strength tool and the website showed up on some directories, business site listings etc. we ( me and the company owner ) never submited the site to. Mostly the name and the website link to the website was/is correct, but the rest is a mess. Yesterday I saw the website link on a page in a category that is absolutely nonsense and there´s no way to change this information ( well I didn´t find the contect info, yet, didnt´have time to do). Such entries could happen because of some not well optimized bots created by those site owners looking for business sites to fill up complete their index . . . or . . . SMP could be the reason by one of our competitors, which woulnd´t make sense since we´re not a big company.
Now I have to go throught those pages that link to our website and try to change the wrong information they have listed. The problem is, most of them require a registration so here we go, I have to spend a lot of time to remove the mess.
Guess this shouldn't be too surprising... too many put too much into bringing others down than in raising themselves up... whether we are talking about websites or otherwise.
Something to consider though for anyone contemplating this, though I can't imagine many who frequent SEOmoz will...
what do you think would be more valuable to the company providing these services... your offering payment to have this done to your competitors, or the price you would pay after it was done to make sure that no one ever "found out?"
Talk about making 10 on the front end and 10x times on the backend.
I agree with Bud, reputation poisoning is nothing earth shattering. And many of the things that you mentioned seem like they are more likely to happen from an overzealous person with monetary goals (i.e. misguided Affiliate or new employee).
Interesting post Rand. Maybe I'm being naive, but do you really think that this is an issue right now? You mention hearing of your first case and then list all the ways in which people might do this, if they were doing it. Is there a danger of hyping something that is very unlikely?
It may be that you've got lots more examples or, as I said, that I'm just being simplistic. But like the cases of neg-SEO mentioned, I do wonder whether there isn't a bit of a case of 'slow news day' syndrome.
That's not to say these practices might not exist, I just can't imagine them existing on any sort of scale right now.
*sits back and waits for company blog to be brought down by neg-SMO*
;)
Ciaran - I think that I've already seen a couple of these campaigns run, but obviously it's hard to know for sure. I'd look for it where it would make the most sense - in a field where there's only a couple players and someone is relatively new to the game.
I experienced it about a year ago. It was a prank that someone pulled on me by posting on a couple SEO blogs that don't authenticate commentors. They said some rude things and used 14thC as the URL.
I actually thought it was kinda funny and learned that nofollows still pass on anchor text value in Google for a little while (about 2 weeks). My logs showed 14thC coming up for KW phrases like "rmccarley is a XXXX".
I stayed quiet about it because I think I know who did it and really don't want any (more) trouble with them. And I didn't want to draw any extra attention to the issue.
But it really is a bit frightening to think what an accomplished SEO can do. Isn't that right, Oatmeal?
(Man, that cracks me up every time)
I'm actually really surprised that this tactic isn't more widespread. It is such an easy yet vindictive practice.
I think this is just part of overall "Negative SEO". Rand you also misspelled "Insidious"
Great new acronym Rand, SMP. I like it.
Would those spammy comments I get on ALL my wordpress blogs from "Google.com" saying stuff like "they are the best search engine," count as SMP?
What would be the urpose of this negative SEO technique other than making the site or brand appear like they are spamming you?
I think the spammers are just testing your defenses. Notice there is a code in many of those comments. The spammer will hunt the code back, identify those blogs where it got through and return later with the real stuff :)
Have you tried filtering those out before they get to moderation or akismet? There are some pugins for that.
Loads of great content at the moment, Rand. I actually have a cap with 'SMP' written on it (some surf thing - and no, I can't surf - or at least not very well). The first 'SMP-hat' to go with white and black ;)
This is a good reminder that all is not necessarily as it seems on the internet - it's easy to pretend to be someone else (though as comments above have mentioned, if people become suspicious, they might be traceable and then the backlash would really begin).
cvos good link. My question is why he tried to hide anyways? Just being open about it would have worked fine instead of hiding his identity.
Rand, your timing is incredible. Today the CEO of Whole Foods was outed for panning a competitor.
John Mackey made negative posts about his main competitor Wild Oats Market in an attempt to devalue their stock price. Its a shame - Whole Foods has great products and claims to treat people and their employees well.
Negative blog posts are a slightly different thing than Social Media Poisoning, but thank for posting the interesting link nonetheless. I would be extra critical in a blog post about a competitor if I was:
a: telling the truth about them
b: helping to warn / alert consumers again an ill conceieved purchases and potentially going to make money off of doing it.
What do you guys think? Would you post a negative blog post about a competiting company?
"What do you guys think? Would you post a negative blog post about a competiting company?"
It is a tough call Solomon-
Even if your intentions are noble, and you want to deliver objective information to the masses, it may be ill received or not completely believed because of your relation with the competitor.
I have always been a firm believer in: "Those who fling dirt at others soil themselves the most."
I think if you can make an intelligent stand on a topic, you can craft your words in such a way so they do not directly have polemical undertones in regards to your competitor. You can let the reader make their own connections.
I would attempt to achieve my good by providing information using general examples without specifically addressing anyone.
I'd be more concerned about the company doing the SMP, than the affected one. Concealing this type of activity is extremely difficult.
Your IP has your location. You might getaway by chaining anonymous proxies, etc. But this can be a potentially legal issue and getting access to the proxies' logs is perfectly possible. Those in the chain that delete log files or don't record them are potentially liable.
I used to work as sysop for an ISP here in the Dominican Republic and I remember getting requests from 'authorities' in other countries trying to investigate all types of fraud.
We need to think twice before attempting this.
Hamlet - hopefully, "we" (any of us) aren't even thinking of attempting this :)
I hope so, too.
Do a search for my name on Google and follow the link to Aaron's blog. There is an example of this. It is more common than we think.