Google Is Fighting Web Spam On A Global Scale
The year 2015 saw a 180% increase in websites that were hacked and a proliferation of websites with extremely poor content. Many websites used content that was scraped from other websites without consideration. As overwhelming as the sheer amount of websites is to any organisation trying to police the internet, Google is continually attempting to create the ideal web search experience, one that it hinges its reputation upon. To even attempt this, it has to pour resources into the effort – both computational resources and man hours.
Dealing With Deception
Whilst algorithms designed to identify web spam and ‘deceptive, poor quality websites’ were very successful, Google reports that it sent a whopping 4.3 million messages to webmasters in 2015 alerting them that the company had ‘taken manual actions around their websites’ and to point out what the issues were. Many sites that were regarded as spammy were also given second chances in a reconsideration process. As Google fights to make the web a high quality search experience for users, the necessity to weed out the manipulative, deceptive and lazy websites on the internet is getting tougher. More people are tempted to use deceptive techniques to get clicks, drag people to their website or to market over-aggressively. There were 400,000 spam reports submitted globally, and out of that figure 65% of them were investigated and 80% of those investigated were classed as spam.
Educating Webmasters
Of course prevention is better than cure, and so Google are giving advice to webmasters over forums and through live events, which is a good way to make sure no one is caught out by the rules – which are regularly updated and altered in line with best practices and new standards. It also helps people who are good contributors to protect their boundaries and keep their content safer from abuse. In truth, there may be many business owners who don’t comprehend that their approach is considered wrong.
The hierarchical nature of the SERPs means that top ranking positions are fiercely fought over which means there is always going to be a degree of manipulation in competitive business practices to fight for those top spots. Their message is that doing absolutely anything to get noticed, in order to get traffic, is not ultimately going to succeed. Quality of message, quality of content, unique content and of course quality of service, will ultimately win favour with Google – and customers too.
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