Tag Archives: Algorithm Updates

Google: Algorithm Update To Tackle Hacked Spam

Google announced on Monday, October 5th that they began rolling out a series of algorithm changes to reduce the amount of hacked spam in the Google SERPs (Search Result Pages).

Google says that the algorithmic updates will eventually impact around 5% of queries depending on the language. What this actually means for your site and current visibility? Not much, if you’re not hacked; or if other sites aren’t hacked above you in the rankings.

Hacked sites aren’t always easy to identify, and it may cause immediate issues or questions if a site is hacked, due to limited knowledge on how to actually fix and identify the site.

Google thankfully has also planned to add a notification (like the mobile friendly update) to the SERP listing if they believe a site has been hacked/spammed as well as a notification in the GWT message center for your website.
Hacked Domain SERP Listing

Google’s Web Spam Release:

Recently we have started rolling out a series of algorithmic changes that aim to tackle hacked spam in our search results. A huge amount of legitimate sites are hacked by spammers and used to engage in abusive behavior, such as malware download, promotion of traffic to low quality sites, porn, and marketing of counterfeit goods or illegal pharmaceutical drugs, etc.

Website owners that don’t implement standard best practices for security can leave their websites vulnerable to being easily hacked. This can include government sites, universities, small business, company websites, restaurants, hobby organizations, conferences, etc. Spammers and cyber-criminals purposely seek out those sites and inject pages with malicious content in an attempt to gain rank and traffic in search engines.

We are aggressively targeting hacked spam in order to protect users and webmasters.