A decision tree for the 'I'm being negative-SEO'd' panic

A decision tree for the 'I'm being negative-SEO'd' panic

Someone points 10,000 Cyrillic spam links at you overnight. Before you disavow, walk this:

— Did rankings actually move? If no, the links are doing nothing. Stop.
— Are these links Google would even count? Scraper sites, auto-generated directories, and link farms are precisely what the algorithm ignores by default.
— Is there a manual action? No action + no movement = no action needed.
— Is the pattern self-evidently external (one anchor, one language, one burst)? Google has said it's good at spotting exactly this.

Only if rankings dropped and the link timing lines up does disavow enter the chat — and even then it's a hedge, not a cure.

Reality check: most 'negative SEO attacks' are links that were already being thrown in the trash before you noticed them.