On August 26, 2025, Google announced the roll out of the August 2025 Web Spam Update. While this is the first spam update of 2025, it’s not the last. Expect to see another one in or around December, if Google sticks to the same schedule of the past few years.
What is the Google Spam Update?
Google’s algorithms and spam detection systems (aka SpamBrain) are always running (even now as you read this), but every so often, Google makes notable adjustments to how they work.
Think of this like turning on all the levers at once. When this happens, Google will make an announcement to give website owners and the community a heads up. And this is how we get a Google Spam Update announcement. (The same goes for Core Update announcements).
How can you tell if your site is affected?
Usually a sudden drop in organic search traffic is an indicator that your site has been impacted by an update. But it also depends on how your site is structured and what your content strategy looks like.
For example, if all of your content is AI-generated or scraped from other sites, and there is little to no editing happening to those pages to make them better, then you could see a sitewide decline.
But if only certain parts of your site contain content created through questionable tactics, then check on those areas to see if traffic there has declined since the update was announced.
What Does Google Consider Spam?
In the realm of Google, spam refers to techniques used to deceive users or manipulate Googlebot.
Some of these practices include
- Cloaking (presenting different content to users and search engines with the intent to manipulate search rankings)
- Expired domain abuse (repurposing an expired domain to host content that provides little to no value to users in order to manipulate search rankings – like hosting affiliate content on a former elementary school site)
- Hidden text and link abuse. This would include using white text on a white background, using CSS to hide content off-screen, or hiding content dynamically on a page.
- Scaled content abuse (using AI or similar tools to generate pages without adding value for users)
- Sneaky redirects (similar to cloaking, this is showing search engines one type of content while redirecting visitors to another).
- Thin affiliation (the practices of publishing content where the product descriptions are copied directly from the original merchant without any original content or added value).
So, what do you do if you think you’ve been negatively impacted by the spam update?
- Honestly evaluate your content:
- Does it provide value?
- Who is it for?
- Audit your links:
- Do the links go to where they say they’re going to?
- Are the backlinks naturally occurring, or have they been purchased?
- Be honest about your content creation process:
- Does your content, the content output and content creation process comply with Google’s guidelines?
- Is your site content scraped from other sites?
- Are you relying solely on AI for content creation without any human editing?
- Are you using AI to create content at scale based on topics regardless of whether the content provides any value to your readers?
- Start fixing your site:
- Remove or improve low-quality, suspect content.
- Write for humans.
- Clean up the spammy backlinks that were acquired.
- Fix technical issues to make sure your site is secure.
- Fix any hacked pages.
Going forward, focus on creating quality, user-focused content, and a good user experience for your audience. And be patient. Recovering from a spam update can take months.