Google concludes its spam update from August, nearly a month after its launch

Google has completed its summer spam update, which began on August 26. It had been some time since one of Google’s regular algorithm updates had taken so long to roll out, which may indicate the significance that the search engine has attached to this particular case. As before, websites affected by this update will have experienced a decrease in their visibility within search results, while those that had previously been impacted have viewed this as an opportunity to regain their positions.

It is worth recalling that this is the first spam update of 2025, as compared to the three that were deployed in 2024. In previous updates, Google explained that it had incorporated a series of significant changes aimed at reducing the presence of spam and improving the quality of search results. These updates sought to better understand whether websites are useless, offer a poor user experience, or appear to be designed for search engines instead of for people.

This same objective has been extended to other core updates. Among these, the focus has been on combating the mass creation of low-quality content, whether produced automatically or with human intervention, with the intent of manipulating search rankings. In addition, specific actions were announced to address the abuse of the reputations of trustworthy sites—where third parties publish poor content—and the misuse of expired domains repurposed to artificially enhance the ranking of low-quality content.

• Google completes its summer core update. It is time to review how you have been affected.

The importance of spam updates for the health of the algorithm

Google’s spam updates are targeted improvements released periodically to identify and penalize websites that attempt to manipulate search results. Their main objective is to ensure that the content users encounter is of high quality and genuinely useful, while reducing the visibility of those sites that do not adhere to best practices.

Essentially, these updates are focused on identifying tactics that violate Google’s guidelines. This includes practices such as:

• Keyword stuffing: Using an excessive number of keywords in an attempt to rank content.
• Automatic content: Generating irrelevant content automatically.
• Manipulated links: Employing unethical strategies to acquire links that improve a website’s ranking.

Furthermore, spam updates not only target known practices, but also adapt to new techniques as they arise. This encompasses the detection of content generated en masse by artificial intelligence without quality oversight, as well as the abuse of expired domains used to manipulate search rankings.

Image: Gemini