By now, you’ve likely seen the announcements about the March 2024 Core Update. This major update will roll out over the entire month and aims to reduce “unhelpful” content by 40%. Interestingly, Google also updated its spam policies to call out some new types of spam it targets. Let’s delve into what exactly changed in … Read more
While honest websites experienced the ups and downs of Google’s March 2024 update, SEOs and recipe bloggers noticed AI spam sites surging to the top of search results. One example as of yesterday ranked for over 217K queries, 14.9K of which rank in the top 10 – and that number has increased a day later. … Read more
Google has announced the completion of its spam update rollout, which began on March 5, alongside a core update. The spam update, which took approximately two weeks to deploy fully, targeted scaled content production, expired domain misuse, and authority abuse. The core update, which incorporates the “Helpful Content” evaluation into the core algorithm, is still … Read more
If you’re like the 41% of email marketing pros who responded to our 2023 State of Email survey, email marketing is your most effective marketing channels. But did you know over 14 of all emails never make it into the inbox? While email deliverability can feel like a bit of a mystery at times, you … Read more
Google’s search results have been hit by a spam attack for the past few days in what can only be described as completely out of control. Many domains are ranking for hundreds of thousands of keywords each, an indication that the scale of this attack could easily reach into the millions of keyword phrases. Surprisingly, … Read more
Google updated their spam policies for web search and the guide to ranking systems to clarify how Google handles sites with a high number of non-consensual explicit imagery and requests for their removals. The changes are to the policy that specifically mentions sites that charge for removal of negative information but the guidance also states … Read more
Email geeks, we see all the hard work you put into your email marketing campaigns. Once you have a great idea, there’s the copywriting, the design work, the coding, the endless back-and-forth editing, and then finally, the operational side of pulling lists or behavioral triggers and actually pressing, “Send.” It’s a lot of work. Yet … Read more
Everyone who uses the internet knows the frustration of web spam, where you find a promising page in search results that is useless. And we all know Google hates spammy websites, probably even more than we do. But as a site owner, how do you know if your site visitors and Google consider your website … Read more
Google has confirmed that the rollout of its October 2023 Spam Update has finished as of October 20. The spam-fighting update was first announced on October 4. In its announcement, Google says the latest spam update was initiated based on user feedback. Many people reported increased spam results when searching in their native languages. With … Read more
You’re looking to reach the inbox — fantastic. You put time into crafting the perfect marketing email and so you want it to reach your recipients and receive positive engagement — even better. As a last check before hitting send, you have found this blog post to confirm that you’re not using any spam trigger … Read more
Google has announced a new update to its search algorithm to reduce spam results for users worldwide. The October 2023 Spam Update targets cloaking, hacked, auto-generated, and scraped spam content in multiple languages, including Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi, Chinese, and others. According to Google, the update was prompted by feedback from its community members who … Read more
“I did what people normally would do — Googled ‘locksmiths near me.’” These telltale words preface a scandalous account of listing spam I recently ran into on an Irish call-in radio show on RTÉ. I’m going to share a summary of it in today’s column, offer my best understanding of the root of the problem, … Read more
Google advises against cheap TLDs due to spam risks, says TLD keywords don’t improve SEO. In a recent podcast, Google’s Search Relations Team discussed how website owners should approach choosing a top-level domain (TLD). The discussion weighed the dilemmas of expensive .com domains versus affordable alternatives like .xyz, emphasizing the need to balance cost, credibility, … Read more
An ongoing issue with Google’s Gmail is disrupting the normal functioning of email newsletter services. The issue is causing many emails to be redirected to subscribers’ spam folders instead of their primary inboxes. This problem came to light at Search Engine Journal in early June when our email newsletter open rates nosedived from our usual … Read more
In a Google SEO office hours session, Google’s Duy Nguyen of the search quality team answered a question about links on spam sites and how trust has something to do with it. It was interesting how the Googler said they were protecting the anchor text signal. It’s not something that’s commonly discussed. Building trust with … Read more
We all get spam calls from time to time, and it can be tempting just to ignore them. However, according to a recent study, spam calls are becoming more and more common, and they’re not just a nuisance. They can also be a serious security risk. According to Purdue University, nearly 4.5 billion spam calls … Read more
Remember the good old days when SEO professionals tried to bamboozle search engines with the “keywords” metatag? It might be happening again through schema stuffing. This time, though, it could do more harm. The other day, a customer was having some problems getting their schema on their web page. I looked at what he had … Read more
Google has published its annual report on search spam revealing SpamBrain, a machine learning-based spam identification system, took action on six times as many spam sites in 2021 as it did in 2020. By identifying these sites, Google claims a 70% reduction in hacked spam and a 75% reduction in gibberish spam on hosted platforms. … Read more
