Google’s ongoing fight against spam

Last week Google revealed they sent out 6 million manual action messages to websites caught trying to manipulate search ranking by violating Google's guidelines in 2017.

Google's algorithms detect the vast majority of spam and automatically demotes it. Google also uses humans to manually review pages and apply manual spam actions or penalties if required. Manual spam actions can result in sites being demoted or even removed entirely from Google search results.

Users hate spam too and readily report it to Google. Last year Google took action on about 90,000 user reports of search spam submitted through their spam reporting tools.

So if you try to spam Google you're likely to get caught out. And if Google doesn't pick it up, chances are someone will report it to them.

Read Google's report "Spotting and squashing spam on Search".

Last week at SMX Advanced Google announced several new advertising features for retailers and brand manufacturers during a keynote discussion with Surojit Chatterjee, who leads product for Google Shopping, at SMX Advanced on Tuesday morning.

The announcements include features for local selling, price comparisons and an update on Google Shopping Actions.

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Google updates ‘Ad Settings’ to allow users to turn off targeting signals. In addition, Google is also extending 'Why this ad?' notices to all services that display Google Ads, including YouTube, Google Play, Gmail, Maps and partner websites and apps.

With the changes, users can turn off some of the interest signals that Google uses for targeting ads. The options are located in the “Personal info and privacy” section of users’ account Ad Settings.

The feature allows users to manage their ad settings and opt out of allowing Google to personalize ads per data it collects on users, including information based on a user’s actions, information a user has added to their Google account or data Google’s partner-advertisers have shared with Google about the user (for example, if a user has visited an advertiser’s website or signed up for a newsletter).

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Google Clears Up Confusion Around Mobile-First Indexing
In response to confusion surrounding mobile-first indexing, Google published a series of tweets clearing up the most common misunderstandings.

Here is a recap of everything Google recently clarified...