Google announced last night that is has begun rolling out a new algorithm update targeting search spam. The new update is named the November spam update and should take about a week to rollout fully.
Google said on Twitter "as part of our regular work to improve results, we've released a spam update to our systems. This November 2021 spam update should be fully rolled out within a week. We encourage sites to follow our best practices for Search."
Google took this opportunity to link to the high level Google webmaster guidelines.
As part of our regular work to improve results, we've released a spam update to our systems. This November 2021 spam update should be fully rolled out within a week. We encourage sites to follow our best practices for Search: https://t.co/jK3ArQmTqT
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 3, 2021
So we do not know if this update targets link spam, content spam, or other forms of search spam. Google is just telling us to follow the overall webmaster guidelines.
Google's Danny Sullivan said spam updates, like this one, specifically target "content" that goes against the Google webmaster guidelines. Here is where Danny said this:
Spam updates deal with content that doesn't follow our guidelines.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 4, 2021
Core updates are simply an adjustment to how we assess content overall.
We've reported on many many unconfirmed updates since this confirmed update, but the last confirmed update was the link spam update that rolled out between July 26, 2021 and August 24th - which was four weeks long, when Google said it would take two weeks to roll out. Before that was the July 2021 core update, Spam part two update, Spam part one update, Page experience update, Predator update, June 2021 core update and products review update.
It does seem like some of the tools picked up on this rollout already - maybe it was something else? I am just not sure if there would be so much volatility from a spam update? The last spam updates, we didn't really see much chatter or signals from the tools that there was an update. So it is hard to say if these tools picked up on this one or not...
On the chatter side, I saw some limited chatter in the past 24 hours at WebmasterWorld:
Today USA traffic is starting the day -62% and still dropping...UK seems to be slowing to zero and the rest of the world is average. It's all so highly manipulated now that there are no reliable traffic patterns.
usa traffic is horrid today, after a [barely] hopeful day yesterday. with sensors going off [yet again] please tell me this isn't another awful update going out. looks to be. for F sake already... work so hard. head hanging low today
Flat line on conversions for me, after the 1st of November. I'm left with a big amount of spam e-mails / requests / bots only. As usual, I'd say.
I lost 27% of my keywords due to the recent updates. It's quite an amount. I am hoping that this is temporary.
Danny also shared more details on timing and what to do if your site was hit by this update:
If it dropped right after we shared about a particular update, look at the guidance we gave about that update. Sometimes, it will be any improvements help for the next round. But we also have lots of small updates and regular ranking changes all the time.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 4, 2021
So watch your rankings over the next week and if you see massive drops, it might be related to this spam update.
What do you do if you were hit? Do an SEO audit to find spam issues you may not be aware was implemented on your site (or maybe you were aware).
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: November 5th, the tools and chatter seem calmer than the day before, we will keep you posted on what we see, if anything, from this update.
Update 2: Glenn Gabe posted a bit of a case study on this on Twitter:
In addition, a query that yielded tens of thousands of spammy pages w/cloaked links now just returns 1 page (see screenshot). So the Nov Spam Update seems to be working... If you've seen many spammy links leading to your site, check them today. They might be gone. :) pic.twitter.com/vHgkAMDU0H
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 5, 2021
