SEO News: Google’s Oct 2022 Spam Update is Here
Rocking the SEO boat for a lot of websites, with its volatility causing rank drop across a number of important keyword groups now, is Google’s Oct 2022 Spam Update. Simply put, it further echoes Google’s clichéd line: build websites for users, not for SEO ranks.
Key Facts: Google’s October 2022 Spam Update
- The Update began on 19th October 2022 and was completed by 21st October 2022.
- Routine updates such as this occur to improve Google’s SpamBrain – An AI-based spam prevention system
- It targeted weak meta tags, keyword stuffing and AI-generated content
What are Google Spam Updates?
According to Google: “While Google’s automated systems to detect search spam are constantly operating, we occasionally make notable improvements to how they work. For example, SpamBrain is our AI-based spam-prevention system. From time to time, we improve that system to make it better at spotting spam and to help ensure it catches new types of spam… Sites that violate our (spam) policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. Making changes may help a site improve if our automated systems learn over a period of months that the site complies with our spam policies.”
What are some Red Flag Spam Signals That Google Looks For:
- Hacked Content
- Phishing
- Hidden Text and Links
- Keyword Stuffing
- Link Spam
- Machine Generated Traffic
- Malware and Malicious Behaviour
- Misleading Functionality
- Scraped Content
- Sneaky Redirects
- Auto Generated Content
- User Generated Spam
- Thin Affiliate Pages
- Cloaking
What was October’s Spam Update Targeting?
It appears that a large amount of focus from Google’s recent October Spam update targeted websites with weak meta tags, that were stuffing too many keywords within content and content which was AI-generated. The Update also aimed at addressing any bad actors utilising phishing scams and a number of black-hat on-page approaches to gaining ranking favour.
Was My Website Impacted from the recent October Spam Update?
It’s completely normal to be experiencing large degrees of Search Visibility and ranking volatility surrounding any Google Algorithm update. This can be a frightening situation for any website to face. Although it’s important to remember that an initial drop in performance does not mean anything conclusive, applying due care and diligence could save you from further commercial loss via rank drop.
My Website was definitely affected - What Now?
If you are noticing a clear drop in ranking performance then you will need to make sure you are not behaving in a way that Google may regard you as a ‘bad actor’ and assess your webpages and their content to make improvements to their overall quality.
Make sure all the content on your web pages are primarily written with your users\customers\visitors in mind rather than simply trying to rank for a particular keyword in Google. As a basic rule of thumb, content, and meta tags should always be written organically without assistance from any AI or by including a certain number of keywords in certain placements.
How We Can Help
Here at PerfectLinkBuilding.Com, we can assist you in further diagnosing why your website might have responded unfavourably in the rankings following October 2022’s recent Spam Update and provide you with an easy strategy designed to return you to continued growth easily and quickly. We can assist with how to create and adjust your existing content so that it is attractive to both your website visitors and Google at the same time through generating engaging and high-value organic content.