Google invests in systems to ensure that sites don’t rise in Search results through deceptive or manipulative behaviour. This is especially important because spam sites can harm or mislead people.
Detecting spam to bring you relevant and reliable results
See how Google keeps you safe on Search
Watch the video
1:50
Why we fight against spam
Spam sites attempt to game their way to the top of Search results through a variety of techniques such as repeating keywords over and over, or showing Google content that's different from what users see (something that's known as 'cloaking'). Hackers sometimes even get into legitimate sites and change them into spam sites that might redirect people into scams or worse.
In 2020 alone, our systems found 40 billion spammy pages every day.
How we target spam
We have clear guidelines that call out spammy behaviour, and provide a clear process to appeal removals once violations have been addressed.
Our automated systems can detect the vast majority of spam and keep it out of your top Search results, similar to how a good email system keeps spam from flooding your inbox.
The rest of spam is tackled manually by our spam removal team, who review pages and flag them if they violate the webmaster guidelines. When we take manual action on content, we try to alert the creator to help them address issues.
Once the problem has been remedied, they can submit for reconsideration. We process all of the reconsideration requests that we receive.
We want website owners to have the information that they need to get their sites in shape. That’s why, over time, we’ve invested substantial resources in webmaster communication and outreach. In 2018, we sent more than 180 million messages to webmasters to notify them of spam issues on their site.
Fighting spam to keep your results safe and useful is a daily challenge.
While we want to be really transparent about how Search works, we also have to be careful not to reveal too much detail that would allow people to game our search results and degrade the experience for everyone.
We learned this lesson the hard way. Back in 1999, Google’s founders published a seminal paper on PageRank, a key innovation in Google’s algorithm. Once that paper was published, spammers tried to game Google by paying each other for links.
Search is a powerful tool. It helps people find, share and access an amazing wealth of content regardless of how they connect or where they are located. We work hard to ensure that you see high-quality Search results and not spam. We’re continuously improving our spam-fighting technology and will continue working closely with webmasters and others to foster and support a high-quality web ecosystem.
