What I'd really like to see is a step-by-step tutorial (preferably a really clear beginner-level one with screenshots etc) on how to find out if you've been -- or are being -- attacked... I've read a lot saying "check for any sudden surge of backlinks... ...and check all backlinks to see if they are from good sites using Google webmaster tools etc"... But how? How do you do any of this? And what determines whether or not the backlinking sites are good or bad (beyond the obvious I mean: backlink from WPTavern = good. Backlink from russianspamcasinos-r-us.com = bad)? It's all so confusing... Ryan has a nice graph at the top of his post (the one with the caption that reads "Orange line showing backlinks to wpsitecare"), but how would someone like me (who doesn't know much about this type of thing) make one of these graphs? One more thing: whoever at Google made negative-SEO possible really should realize that what they've done is effectively give weapons to criminals - and put an immediate stop to it! The criminals are to blame for actually doing the harm of course, but equally so (if not more so) are the individuals at Google who armed them! Don't Google realize how much harm they're doing to people's livelihoods and businesses by making this possible? :(