Yeah, Google got this one wrong. Just read up on the Google Penguin penalty.
Google used to change the value of "bad" links to 0 rather than negative. The problem was that there was no risk to spamming. You might waste time, but you might get some links that Google didn't realize were spam.
There are a lot of problems with what srean suggested above, namely that it favors big brands who work with other big brands and creates additional barriers to entry for new companies.
I think Google has gone too far in link-based penalties, but the solution isn't to stop them altogether. Their current solution for weighing anchor text and trust is pretty weak. I've never seen a confirmed case of "negative SEO" working to penalize, but I have seen Google penalizing people for things that were not meant to manipulate the algorithm.
There's not an easy solution, but I think it's a far more sophisticated spam-fighting algorithm.
Google used to change the value of "bad" links to 0 rather than negative. The problem was that there was no risk to spamming. You might waste time, but you might get some links that Google didn't realize were spam.
There are a lot of problems with what srean suggested above, namely that it favors big brands who work with other big brands and creates additional barriers to entry for new companies.
I think Google has gone too far in link-based penalties, but the solution isn't to stop them altogether. Their current solution for weighing anchor text and trust is pretty weak. I've never seen a confirmed case of "negative SEO" working to penalize, but I have seen Google penalizing people for things that were not meant to manipulate the algorithm.
There's not an easy solution, but I think it's a far more sophisticated spam-fighting algorithm.