Google has released its Webspam Report for 2016, which provides insight into the top webspam trends the company noticed over the previous year — as well as what Google is doing to fight it.
Here is a recap of some of the key data points from Google’s report, which is broken down into three sections.
Top Webspam Trends in 2016
- Website security: There was a 32% increase compared to 2015.
- Beyond webspam: “We saw a lot of webmasters affected by social engineering, unwanted software, and unwanted ad injectors”
- Mobile webspam: Due to the increase in mobile browsing, there was a rise in spam targeting mobile users. The spam is usually unwanted redirects.
How Google Fought Spam
- Made multiple algorithm improvements, included making Penguin part of the core algorithm.
- Manually sent 9 million messages to webmasters to notify them of webspam issues on their sites.
- Started sending more security notifications via Google Analytics.
- Took manual action on over 10,000 sites that had structured data markup which did not meet Google’s quality guidelines.
How Google Worked With The Community
- Received 180,000 user-submitted spam reports in 2016, 52% of them were confirmed to be spam.
- Conducted more than 170 online office hours and live events around the world.
- Provided support to website owners through the Webmaster Help Forums in 15 languages
