A client sees their rankings drop by 15 places in 3 weeks. No apparent reason.

Backlink audit: 340 new referring domains in 1 month. Surprise: they didn’t ask for any of it.

Looking closer: casino sites, parapharmacy sites, illegal streaming sites. All linking to their site. All toxic.

Negative attack or simple automated spam? It doesn’t matter. The result is the same: Google suspects a pattern of artificial links.

The fix:

1. List all suspicious domains in Ahrefs/Moz
2. Identify patterns (same IP, same owner, spammy content)
3. Disavow via Search Console
4. Document and submit a reconsideration request if necessary

For this client: 287 domains disavowed. 6 weeks later: rankings restored.

Backlink monitoring is not optional. Every week, I check for new referring domains. A suspicious spike = immediate investigation.

Negative attacks exist. Google’s classification errors do too.

When did you last check your new backlinks?

Stéphane Jambu
E-commerce Consultant · Visibility/SEO · AI Process
650+ clients · 80 LinkedIn recommendations

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