Google’s Danny Sullivan confirms an algorithm update targeted at fighting spam is rolling out to search results.
The rollout of the update will conclude today, June 23, 2021. A second spam update will follow next week.
Exact details were not provided about this specific update. Though Google regularly rolls out spam updates to maintain the quality of its search results.
It’s unlikely a legitimate website following Google’s webmaster guidelines have anything to worry about with respect to these spam updates.
Google has a strict definition of what it considers spam, and it primarily includes low quality sites that trick users into providing personal information or installing malware.
Spam updates also target phishing scams, and other bad actors on the web that try to rank in search results by posing as highly relevant pages.
With that said, even sites that follow Google’s guidelines are vulnerable to hacked spam. If a site is not adequately secured it could be serving spam to users without knowing it.
Google’s annual spam fighting report indicates that hacked spam is rampant. If your site suddenly drops in rankings following today’s update or the one next week, it would be wise to examine your site’s security and look for signs of a possible attack.
When a site is hit by a spam update its content is either demoted in search results or removed from Google’s index.
The company estimates that its automated systems keep more than 99% of visits from search results spam-free.
In announcing this update, Sullivan links to a blog post from April which details the results of Google’s recent spam fighting efforts.
Last year Google’s automated systems blocked 25 billion spammy pages from being indexed in search results every day.
We’ll likely learn more about the impact of the June 2021 spam updates when Google publishes its annual spam fighting report next year.
As part of our regular work to improve results, we've released a spam update to our systems. You can learn more about our efforts to fight spam in this post:https://t.co/piCLhbZPkH
And this video below:https://t.co/xMYWm4HPze pic.twitter.com/83IL0EB9Lm
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 23, 2021
For more information on how Google fights spam, Sullivan links to the video below:
