Google has revealed an annual Web Spam Report for all web owners

What is spam?

Google defines “spam” that is deliberately created to deceive and potentially harm users to benefit your website, it would not get a good rating.

If you want to see a more comprehensive list of spammy behaviours can be found on Google Webmaster guidelines.

How Google stops spam?

In most cases, Google automatically defines spammy behaviour of any content and ensures that those pages do not rank well in search results.

The company also uses human analysis to determine if the contents are spammy. The human review process often leads to improved automated systems. “We look to understand how that spam got past our systems and then work to improve our detection, so that we catch the specific case and automatically detect many other similar cases overall.”, according to Google.

Spammy content is often removed completely from the search results. Google may also allow website owners to resolve issues by allowing them manual actions via Google Search Console.

Major highlights from the web spam report:

Following are some important figures that are emphasized in Google webspam report.

• Google says its efforts ensure that more than 99% of visits from its results lead to a spam-free experience.
• Paid links and link exchanges have been made less effective, with Google catching more than 90% of link spam.
• The company reduced user-generated spam in 2018 by 80% and after that this type of abuse has not grown in 2019.
• The impact of spammy sites on search users is reduced by more than 60%.
• Google received approx. 230,000 search spam reports last year and almost they have acted against 82% of them.
• The company also generated over 90 million messages to different companies about issues which may affect their website appearance in search results.
• Around 4.3 million messages were sent regarding manual actions from Webmaster Guidelines violations.

Conclusion

Spam hurts the entire eco search system, including searchers and legitimate sites appearing in results. A spam-free experience also increases the likelihood that users will rely on Google in the same way and keep advertisers paying to reach those potential audiences.