In less than about 42 hours, Google has fully rolled out the last spam update - the Google October 2022 spam update. The update began on October 19, 2022, at about 11 am ET and was completed on October 21, 2022, at about 5 am ET.
That was quick, the previous spam update in November 2021 took 8 days to roll out but some previous spam updates were rolled out within 24 hours of launching.
The impact seems pretty big for those hit by this update, but the net was not widespread. Meaning, I don't see a ton of complaints in the SEO community and the automated tracking tools are not showing huge volatility - not yet at least.
Google October 2022 Spam Update Quick Facts
Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:
- Name: Google October 2022 Spam Update
- Launched: October 19, 2022 at around 11 am ET
- Rollout: Completed on October 21, 2022 at around 5 am ET
- Targets: It improves Google's spam detection techniques, Google said "sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all."
- Penalty: It penalizes spam techniques that are against Google's spam policies.
- Global: This is a global update impacting all regions and languages.
- Impact: Google would not tell me what percentage of queries or searches were impacted by this update.
- Recover: If you were hit by this, Google said you should review its spam policies to ensure they are complying with those.
- Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to the spam update. It can take many months to recover, Google said.
Previous Google Spam Updates:
- October 19, 2022: Released the October 2022 spam update. The rollout was complete as of October 21, 2022.
- November 3, 2021: Released the November 2021 spam update. The rollout was complete as of November 11, 2021 and seemed significant.
- July 26, 2021: Released the July 2021 link spam update. The rollout was complete as of August 24, 2021.
- June 28, 2021: Released the second part of the June 2021 spam update. The rollout was completed later that same day.
- June 23, 2021: Released the first part of the June 2021 spam update. The rollout was completed later that same
SEO Chatter
Here is some of the early chatter on this October 2022 spam update from both WebmasterWorld and comments here. I am not seeing much more chatter than what I posted yesterday, so here is some of that chatter again plus a bit more that I didn't post yesterday.
Lost more than 50% since yesterday. Hope this is temporary.
Day after day I see the number of indexed pages decreasing (I mean on Search Console).Furthermore, the new pages are in no way taken into consideration, despite the various additions on SC, the links on the site, sitemap, social links etc.
down 30-40% in HCU, recovered 15-20% in the core, back down to HCU levels in PRU (not even a single affiliate link or product review article in the site), and now prob. going down even below as the rankings are worst it's ever been
All of a sudden, Lost all the feature snippet of site in this unannounced update. Does anyone know the cause of it? Is this "site-wide snippet penalty" or "Bug in Google system"?
right now seeing sharp decline in ranking, is that update announced or not?
50k daily to 2k. well done Google
My traffic has been hit again with -150 -200 users. from the 600 users.
My website went down on 12 oct 2022, I don't know the exact reason behind this but I was doing great.
It's a spam update. If you've been making spam, maybe don't make spam.
— 🦇 johnmu: cats are not people 🦇 (@JohnMu) October 19, 2022
It's more of a general spam update, but even there, everything kinda drifts into the same direction (reducing spam in search also helps highlight other good content).
— 🦇 johnmu: cats are not people 🦇 (@JohnMu) October 19, 2022
We have the spam policies that list a lot of this: https://t.co/tzuNXIVzop
— 🦇 johnmu: cats are not people 🦇 (@JohnMu) October 19, 2022
The last spam update we announced was November last year, so it's not a ton of big, announced updates. We do work on our systems regularly outside of those too.
— 🦇 johnmu: cats are not people 🦇 (@JohnMu) October 20, 2022
But yes, there are lots of curious people on the internet :)
Google Tracking Tools
Less than a day later, here are what the tracking tools are showing:
So are you seeing anything yet? Let us know.
Forum discussion at Twitter and WebmasterWorld.
