Google Spam Update 2022: What Is It?

Google upgrades its search engine and adds new algorithm from time to time to eliminate spam website and improve the user experience.

When Google rolls out a new google search algorithm update, it usually tries to do one of two things:

• Make sure the results are not filled with spam website;
• Improve the overall quality of final search results.

The last time Google announced its latest update in google algorithm, there was a lot of confusion regarding the situation in the SERPs. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t describe updates in detail, so people find themselves guessing and reading pieces of explanation to try to figure out what happened. Therefore, we created this article containing all the Google updates relating to the ranking.

Google’s search algorithm is able to take the web pages found by its crawlers and added to its index and classify them into groups to get the results for queries. Over the years, it has developed from something simple, easily fooled by carefully crafted URLs and texts, to an algorithm that includes machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).

How Important Are Google Algorithm Updates for SEO?

The goal of each google search algorithm update is to further increase the quality of search results for users. Google uses more than 200 ranking elements to calculate the quality and relevance of each URL. As a result, Google’s ranking algorithms allow you to obtain the most relevant information from the Google index.

Algorithm updates can affect your site’s rankings and visibility. Still, if you’re taking into account the Quality Rate Guidelines and writing high-quality content, a Google algorithm update may never affect your rankings, at least directly. However, other sites could gain and lose visibility by indirectly influencing your SEO rankings.

The main goal of Google updates is to reduce spam, as stated by Google. For example, there was an update that only affected link spam. This was not a general spam update but aimed to reduce the amount of spam in the SERPs, so users get better results.

One of Google’s main concerns is that websites use “black hat” tactics like keyword stuffing, cloaking, and sneaky redirects to manipulate search engine results and earn money by displaying advertisements next to their pages.

The categories of sites most affected:

• News
• Sport
• Arts and Entertainment
• Technology

What does this list show? Surely, if you run a news or sports site, you have to reassess your SEO strategy. Arts and entertainment and tech sites follow suit, but the list is long. It should be noted that not all sites were hit hard, and by analyzing some of them closely, it clearly emerged that only those with the following characteristics had suffered penalties:

• Poor or Little Content: Most of them didn’t have amazing content, but many had little in-depth content. And to clarify, by sparse content, we don’t mean low word count, but content that didn’t really provide much value.
• Poorly Crafted Meta Tags: Meta tags are a crucial part of every website. Many of the affected websites had pages with duplicate meta tags or were written for search engines and not humans. Google algorithm update 2022 for ranking now understands much better how to interpret the content of a page and even its design.
• Keyword stuffing: Many of the affected sites were overstuffing the keywords they wanted to rank for in their content. KW stuffing is a very well-known Black Hat SEO technique and is condemned by search engines that are now very good at recognizing it and… condemning it mercilessly.

In short, the new algorithm was designed to target spam sites with low-quality content.

The SEO experts have tried to examine patterns and correlations also based on backlinks but without success, but this does not mean that Google has not taken this aspect into consideration.

Let’s touch on Google Spam Update October 2022. New features aim at hitting the “most spammy” part of the SERP. Thanks to the “Spam Update October 2022”, it will be possible to provide “ranking” penalties! Google said that its goal is to constantly improve its algorithms, with the aim of making the identification of “spammy” content more and more effective.

Google has also specified that if, in the coming days, some sites should notice a worsening in their “ranking,” probably these sites will have to review their contents, making them more compliant with the search engine’s guidelines.

The First Effects of the Update

However, before seeing the placements really dance, you have to wait for a short period of time and let the changes will be implemented in the data centers.

However, some analysts have already noticed more intense volatility spread in the SERPs: based on the information gleaned from the chatter within the SEO community and Google’s early monitoring tools, there are sites that have already suffered a decline in traffic of the 20-60% since the launch began, but we reiterate that it requires time to check if these drops are actually related to the update.

For sure, however, every time Google renovates its search ranking algorithms, it means that our site can do better or worse in search results, depending on how well it meets Google’s quality judgment (and how much our competitors do). It is for this reason that it is useful to know when these updates start and are in progress to have a point of reference in analyzing the possible variations in site traffic and being able to determine whether the drop (or surge) is to be attributed precisely to new forms of evaluation of the results introduced by Google or by changes that we have implemented on the site itself.

The Other Latest Updates in Google Algorithm

2022 has not been a particularly busy year at Google, and some of the interventions have been limited only to particular geographical areas – with some countries remaining excluded.

So what should we know regarding the new Google update? There is little other practical or detailed data on the interventions that will actually be implemented (but it could not be otherwise, for reasons of safety and opportunity), and therefore we can do nothing but recall the by-now old (but not obsolete) guide with the advice and best practices to deal with an update, published in 2019 – it is always Google that still refers to this document, even today.

In a nutshell, the general indications that Google offers to webmasters, SEOs, and digital marketers regarding core updates are:

• You may notice widely noticeable effects, such as spikes or dips in search rankings.
• The core updates are “broad,” meaning they don’t target anything specific but are designed to improve Google’s systems overall.
• Pages that drop in the ranking are not penalized but re-evaluated against other web content that has been published since the last update.
• Focusing on proposing the best possible content is the most effective way to address the influence of core algorithm update.
• Broad core updates occur periodically: sites may not recover traffic and locations lost with one update until the next is released.
• Optimizations on the site do not guarantee recovery – but even doing nothing will result in virtually no recovery. In fact, there are no specific actions to be taken to recover, and, as mentioned, a negative impact on the ranking may not signal that there is something wrong with your pages.

How can you deal with this new algorithm update from Google? The most important thing to avoid penalties is to write in a “natural way,” with content updated and interesting for your “buyer persona.” Therefore, even for new Google updates, the most effective countermeasure “is simply” DON’T SPAM!

Some useful tips for creating “antispam” content:

1. Have you identified a target that may find your content useful?
2. Does your site focus on a specific topic?
3. Have you identified your “strategic keyword”?
4. Is your content made primarily to appeal to your audience or is optimized above all for search engines?
5. You’re producing content on multiple topics with the goal of ranking on multiple words key?
6. You’re writing content because the topics you cover are “trendy” or because they’re useful to your target?
7. You make an effort to write evaluating the usefulness of what you promote (service/product) from the point of view of your reader?
8. You’re writing “minimum” text just because you’ve heard that Google rewards articles with at least 300 words? (remember that the length of a text does not count if the content is poor!).

First, we invite you not to be scared. Google has not yet released any statement concerning the factors used for the latest update in google algorithm. It only stated that it took into consideration the content of a page and its quality, as well as the presence of duplicate or irrelevant content. From what we see, most of this update has focused on content, meta tags, and keyword stuffing. That doesn’t mean that Google hasn’t taken into account other factors like links or AI-generated content.

We would like to admit that while many sites have been impacted by this update, it wasn’t a “hard” update – we’re not seeing anything like Panda or Penguin. It was more like Panda 4.0, where updates were rolled out over months, and no single update had enough of an influence to be considered a revolution. If you want to achieve good long-term results, focus on the user: this is the only right way to win.

Ask yourself questions like:

• Will this content be useful to users?
• Is it useful to use the same meta tags on all pages?
• Does my website provide enough value to get people to link to me?

In the short term, being user-centric may not pay off as much as you want, but trust us, it pays off in the long run, and you’re more protected from Google updates. On the contrary, if you look for shortcuts and various “magic,” we all know that it is only a matter of time before Google makes a special update, turning that magic into tears.