The Google October 2023 Spam Update has just been rolled out.There was a substantial overlap between this update and the Google October 2023 core upgrade, which also concluded yesterday. The Google update started several hours before this update finished, and it ended many hours before that update finished.
The goal of this spam update is to remove various spam formats that have been reported in Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi, Chinese, and other languages by members of our community.
This should lessen the amount of spam that is displayed in search results, especially when it comes to auto-generated, cloaked, hacked, and scraped spam. The rollout of the update will take a few weeks.
Significant Volatility
Similar to the majority of past core changes, this one felt significant in terms of the quantity of sites experiencing fluctuating rankings and the SEO concerns we observed during the rollout.
We’ll do our best to complete the data provider analysis, but it may be challenging given the two significant confirmed upgrades that are being released simultaneously.
October 2023 Google Spam Update Quick Facts
The following is a summary of the most significant things that we now know:
- Name: October 2023 Google Spam Update Launched: October 4, 2023, about 12:50 p.m. Eastern Time
- Launch Date: October 20, 2023, around 1:15 a.m. ET
- Penalty: It penalizes spam strategies that violate Google’s anti-spam guidelines.
- Refreshes: Google plans to periodically update the spam report. Recuperation can take many months, according to Google.
- Global: All languages and territories will be impacted by this global upgrade.
- Targets: In Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi, Chinese, and other languages, it specifically targets cloaking, hacked, auto-generated, and scraped spam.
- Recover: Google advised reviewing its spam regulations to make sure they are being followed if you were impacted by this.
Why It Matters to Us?
All brands, companies, and organizations need to be aware of Google algorithm modifications since they might affect how well your website ranks in search results. Positive or negative changes in rankings resulting from a core upgrade might affect your organic traffic, revenue, and conversions.
When you are aware of Google’s update cycles, you can use that information to determine if the changes you made to your website or Google’s ranking algorithm is to blame.
What Google Views as False or Sammy?
Google’s documentation on spam policies lists forbidden practices. Google views certain practices as Sammy, such as:
- Hidden text or links that appear to search engines but are invisible to people.
- Low-value content that is automatically generated.
- Extensive, unauthorized article scraping.
- Pages crammed with intrusive advertisements.
- Affiliate material with a strong monetization focus.
- “Doorway” pages and other search engine optimization techniques.
- Harsh or deceptive marketing strategies, such as exaggerated claims.
Ways Google Combats Spam
Google uses both human and computer reviewers to find and remove Sammy pages and websites. Spam Brain is one such system that uses AI and machine learning to keep up with new spam strategies.
Google makes these kinds of adjustments on a regular basis to stay up to current with changing spam tendencies.
How to act if you are struck?
Google has previously provided guidance on what to think about if a core upgrade has a negative effect on you:
- Recovery doesn’t require any particular actions. It’s possible that a poor rating doesn’t indicate that there is a problem with your pages.
- Should a core upgrade affect your website, Google has provided a list of questions to think about.
- According to Google, there may be a slight improvement in between core updates, but the largest change occurs following a subsequent core update.
Conflicting Updates
Google’s Search Liaison responded on X when we questioned why the company had released two changes at the same time:
“Generally, we do try to keep updates like these apart, but it’s not always possible.”
It’s rather simple for anyone attempting to grasp changes, though. It could be the main update if you notice changes and don’t spam.
If you are spamming and notice changes, it’s most likely the update for spam. Specifically, yesterday we provided an update regarding spam. This should not result in adjustments being made to websites that do not spam.
He continued, “A core upgrade was issued. That is not the same as an update with spam. In general, our ranking has improved. This won’t affect many websites, and it has nothing to do with spam.”