Negative SEO - Harming Your Competitors Easily

There are 7 ways you can impact your competitors negatively:

(1) Google Bowling
(2) Tattling
(3) Google Insulation
(4) Copyright Takedown Notices
(5) Copied Content
(6) Denial of Servic

The Forbes article is a little sensationalistic.

Reporting paid links to Google – what Forbes pejoratively calls "tattling" – is not just ethical, it's something we should be encouraging every search engine professional to do. (You should report paid links even in industries that don’t affect you – the better to discredit the link selling industry and make people think twice before using them.)

"Insulation" – creating many sites to take up real estate – is a legitimate tactic employed by a lot of big brands. It can be frustrating to the rest of us who would like to place in SERPS for those brands, but it is not unethical.

Click Fraud – a major problem on the internet and one I spend a lot of time fighting. But the perpetrators aren't competitors. They are "affiliates" of YSM and Google AdWords who try to make money by clicking away.

Denial of Service, copying content, buying links to competitors – yes those are bad things. I wish law enforcement agencies would get involved. Right now it's still the Wild West on the internet.