By Today Google announced a major effort to combat link spam impacting search results.
In the announcement for this update Google claims: “SpamBrain is our AI-based spam-prevention system. Besides using it to detect spam directly, it can now detect both sites buying links, and sites used for the purpose of passing outgoing links.”
“SpamBrain is our AI-based spam-prevention system. Besides using it to detect spam directly, it can now detect both sites buying links, and sites used for the purpose of passing outgoing links.” – Google Blog
It would appear Google is targeting four popular types of link building / link spam – buying links outright, building a network of interconnected sites to sell link spam or use for your own purposes (i.e. a PBN), news websites charging a publication or review fee to post articles, and guest blogging.
If this is accurate the last two are probably the most problematic as they are not always link spam, are often helpful, and it gives publishers alternative revenue streams to Google’s ad empire.
Google’s SpamBrain is an A.I. system that has been around since 2018 and likely keeps getting updated with new spam discoveries by Google’s team as well as with improved machine learning. We didn’t learn about SpamBrain as a name until earlier this year, though we have known Google uses machine learning to counter the impacts of spam for sometime.
This update is likely designed to catch link spam tricks that have evaded SpamBrain / Google’s systems in the past and might target those used by popular link selling agencies such as The Hoth and Fat Joe. If you have ever purchased links from any link seller group or from an SEO who cited exact pricing to place links on editorial websites – you are likely to see negative impacts from this update.
While Google’s A.I. efforts to fight spam are not new, SpamBrain being able to detect certain types of sites is according to Google’s Danny Sullivan
"it can now detect both sites buying links" fro m our post covers this. It's possible we've used it in some edge / minor situations, but this is the first real implementation of it for link spam (hence why we did a post about it) https://t.co/LLngrATiLV
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 14, 2022
From the Blog post by Google:
“…it can now detect both sites buying links, and sites used for the purpose of passing outgoing links.”
Here is everything we know about the Google’s December 2022 Link Spam Update
- Date Started: December 14th, 2022
- Date Completed: January 12th, 2023
- Rollout started while another major update was rolling out. Google is currently running updates for the Helpful Content algorithm it released in August. This update started on December 5th, 2022 and is expected to finish on December 19th, 2022.
- Notability: This is the first time Google’s spam fighting artificial intelligence was able to detect sites buying links and sites used to sell links.
- First Impact Reported:
- Most Impacted Industry(ies):
- Most Impacted Site(s):
- Most Impacted Website Types:
- Most Impacted Content Types:
- SEO Change Proven to Improve: Stop buying links / selling links, disavow any purchased links, work to create new high-quality links via other link building tactics
- Languages Impacted: All
- Regions Impacted: Global
Transparency Report
We add this section when an update may have impacted our clients or our portfolio of websites. Below you’ll find positive and negative impacts to client websites / our websites if those impacts were deemed statistically significant AND if we believe we understand one or more of the reasons behind the adjustment.
no clients impacted yet.
Link Spam Update Help
Tips
- Unless you get hit with a manually penalty, the best way to recover from a link spam update is to find ways to build high-quality backlinks to your homepage and content.
- Do not panic. I know that sounds easy to say, but panic caused by a Google algorithm update rarely solves problems with rankings.
- If you see a loss of rankings over the next few weeks it could be this update. Ask yourself if you have sold or purchased any links in the past. If you have an SEO agency or consultant ask them.
- Be careful of SEO tools claiming to know what links pointing to your website are “toxic” or might have caused a loss of traffic during this update. Typically Google’s spam systems seek to simply nullify the value of link spam and while disavowing my help, there’s a chance if done poorly it could also hurt your site. Tread exremely carefully here.
- Find one or more link building tactics you can use to score high-quality links
- Read Google’s announcement on the December 2022 Link Spam Update from their website here: December 2022 link spam update releasing for Google Search
- Hire an SEO agency either one in your local area or one talented at building high-quality links naturally that help elevate your site in rankings *hint* you are reading our website *hint*. All of our SEO clients get access to amazing Google-safe link building out of the gate such as our inbound Digital PR service which finds stories you might be a good fit for and helps to get your brand noticed in the media.
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: What is Link Spam?
Answer: Google considers any link placed to try and manipulate search results to be link spam. This typically includes paid links and links with exact match anchor text in poorly written articles, but it can exist in many different forms.
Question: Can internal links be link spam?
Answer: Obviously Google can’t decipher intention of all links placed on a website or in a document. Did I place these internal links in this article to help users or to try and boost my rankings. Most likely Google assumes the best intentions until they get overwhelming evidence to the contrary. At which point I would not be surprised if internal links were considered to be spam and ignored. For example in this article I link internally to our “SEO Agency” page using that exact same text. Might Google ignore this for spam? Possibly, but it’s also a CTA to help my business and users so really do not care what Google thinks. In general to avoid any spam issues keep the number in-content internal links to a minimum and link to relevant content.
Question: I am a publisher and have sold article placements for a review fee, is this link spam?
Answer: That probably depends on who you ask and how the transaction went down. Google staff would probably tell you it is spam no matter what. However, I would take a more nuanced approach. Did you charge a review fee and feel confident you could reject the article? Did you remove or adjust any links in that article? Did the buyer demand you promise not to change anything in the article and you declined? If the answer to any of these is “Yes” then I would consider your editorial review fee as legitimate. Google likely takes a less nuanced approach here and if they see an editorial review fee getting charged AND some questionable or outright spammy content then you might get dinged for it or worse.
Question: I have never purchased links or sold links but my traffic tanked, what should I do?
Answer: I would have an SEO examine your site and see if there are other underlying issues. The knee-jerk reaction might be to use a so called “toxic link” tool and disavow everything it finds, but it could be someting unrelated to this update. Biggest things to look for would be total ranking position drops, quantity of thin content on your site, and any major technical errors in your architecture. Soemtimes an update hits and you drop 1 position (from #1 to #2) but lose 60% of traffic.
Question: My competitor does nothing but buys links and they were not impacted by this update. Why is Google so unfair like this? What can I do?
Answer: Google is far from perfect and updates like this are not always applied evenly or in the way we want. Your best bet to compete is to get involved in your local community or your industry and to find ways to build high-quality link naturally. This method ultimately always wins against the link spammers.