Matthew Widdop
Matty is a Junior SEO Executive at Intelligency, helping our clients to improve their digital performance. Matty is currently studying for his Level 3 Multi-Channel Marketer apprenticeship and has completed a Sport Journalism Degree at the University of Huddersfield.
Last week Google announced their June 2024 spam update which finished rolling out yesterday on 27th June 2024.
What is the Google Spam Update?
Google continually tackle spam throughout the year but often make updates to their system to deal with new types of spam, in order to improve the quality of search results.
For example, Google has its own AI powered spam detection technology, Spam Brain, which they update regularly to make it better at spotting spam.
What is Spam?
Spam is unwanted or unsolicited digital information that is sent out in bulk. Google have a number of different policies for identifying spam, these include:
Hacked Content
Refers to content that has been placed on a site without permission, this could be due to a site being vulnerable or unprotected. If a site is hacked, Google recognizes this as spam as it is potentially harmful to the end user, this will negatively impact Google rankings.
Keyword Stuffing
Keywords are used by Google to understand your site and content, by using keywords Google will know which search results to rank your content for. Certain users therefore overload their sites with target keywords to appear higher up the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). If Google notices keyword stuffing on a site it will be moved the SERP, as it violates spam policy.
Link Spam
Links are used by Google when indexing and ranking sites to understand how content is related. Backlinks are links from external sites that link to your internal pages adding relevance to your content. A backlink from a quality website that has reputable traffic and content will increase your website in Google’s rankings. Therefore, some users buy and sell links in order to try and increase authority to their site. This is in violation of Google’s spam policy and could negatively impact the ranking of a site or see it blacklisted from the SERP altogether.
How do I avoid spam on my site?
You can access the full list of Google’s spam policies and make sure to remove any content on your site that Google would consider spam in accordance with the guidelines. When Google continues to re index your site, they will take these changes into account and your rankings will improve.
