James Dooley and Brian Ko discuss how businesses can defend against negative SEO and black hat attacks because many websites lose rankings when competitors manipulate brand signals, reviews or entity information. Brian Ko explains that some attacks are self inflicted through poor link building or weak site foundations, while others involve entity poisoning, review bombing or brand disambiguation that confuses search engines. They discuss how to monitor brand signals, protect knowledge panels and respond correctly to negative reviews because reputation signals influence search visibility and AI systems. The conversation also covers link strategies, canonical issues and why building stronger links and brand authority is often the best defence against toxic backlinks and coordinated SEO attacks.