Google spoke at the three-day Google Search Central Live Deep Dive event in Europe about why it has rolled out so many spam updates in 2026, according to John Campbell's recap at We Are Roast. He said that Google has been doing more spam updates because there is so much more new content than before. He also said Google is using AI to catch more spam.
Here are some quotes from what John posted on this topic:
- A high percentage of content is spam, and that is what the spam updates target.
- There have been more spam updates recently because there is so much more new content.
- The team is now using AI to help catch more of it.
- AI slop is increasing, which means more poor quality content in the [Discover] feed.
- User feedback is really important here. It is what new spam filters are built from.
- Gary Illyes closed the morning with one number: Google filters out 40 billion spam pages a day. (note, this is not new, it was posted here ages ago
He also posted the three reasons Google keeps updating how it judges quality :
1. Content formats have expanded: Search has moved from ten blue links to far more media. Each format needs its own way of judging quality.
2. Content breadth has grown: There are many more pages and sites than there used to be. Core updates don’t focus on websites. They target content at page level, not at domain level. That is why some pages on a site go up while others go down.
3. Content issues: This is spam. Updates here improve how Google catches it, e.g.: cloaking, doorway pages, scraped content, link spam, hacked content and "Gary’s warning was that scaled content is now becoming more of a problem than link spam," he added.
John added to his summary, "Expect more spam updates. Google is dealing with a growing flood of AI slop. Expect more spam updates and new spam thresholds. Scaled, low-effort content is the risk."
There is also the pillars of quality, which we covered in the updated docs on Friday - EOT/SA sections:
Con toda esa información he creado una skill para Claude y Codex que audita tu web con esos mismos criterios: los cuatro pilares de quality, el test del contenido commodity y las señales del leak.
El post y la skill, gratis: https://t.co/ea95rApGkS
— Nacho Mascort (@NachoMascort) October 4, 2026
Quality at Google: what it is, how it is measured and how long it takes to recover from a core update? @NachoMascort shares a breakdown of Google’s approach to quality and core updates based on what was presented at the Search Central Live Deep Dive in Barcelona, Google’s documentation, and his own experience managing large sites.
A few takeaways for your next content audit:
* Assess effort, originality, talent or skill, and accuracy across your main page types. * Identify “commodity content”: what does your page contribute that users can’t already find elsewhere? * Check what happens when you scale: A useful template for 100 pages might offer much less value across 10,000. * More
A practical question to ask: If you replaced your brand with a competitor’s, would the content still be just as useful? What makes your version worth choosing?
Read now: https://t.co/Z2lQ5rAxgL
— Aleyda Solis 🕊️ (@aleyda) October 5, 2026
Check out the full recap at We Are Roast.
Forum discussion at X.
