Acts of online sabotage can involve discrediting a business’s products/service with negative (and often fake) reviews, as well as running a link spam campaign to bring on/cause a Google penalty, or even hacking a website.
Reboot Digital surveyed 1,672 business owners to expose just how many businesses would consider sabotaging a competitor if they THOUGHT THEY WOULD get away with. They also sought to expose out of those who had sabotaged, which industries appeared to be more culpable.
Some of the key results from the study include:
- 0.3% of business owners surveyed HAVE sabotaged another competitor’s online business
- Out of the business owners that would sabotage a competitor, 25% were from Recruitment and HR
- 30% would sabotage a competitor because they have a ‘better product’, followed by ‘to make them lose clients’ (18%)
- The most popular technique businesses would use to compromise a competitor’s website is: ‘Fake reviews’ (57%), and ‘running a negative influencer campaign’ (26%)
- Reboot Digital sent out a fake email offering negative SEO services and 13% of recipients accepted the offer!
