On July 26, Google announced a link spam update that would roll out over the coming two weeks but, ultimately, took a full month to finish rolling out. Search Quality Analyst at Google, Duy Nguyen, said that although “link spam has been greatly reduced over the past two decades, thanks to our constant improvements in our ranking systems and spam detection systems.”
“This algorithm update… is even more effective at identifying and nullifying link spam more broadly, across multiple languages. Sites taking part in link spam will see changes in Search as those links are re-assessed by our algorithms.” – Duy Nguyen, Search Quality Analyst at Google
The update didn’t penalise sites for spammy links but nullified any ranking benefits so sites with major issues in their link profiles could experience ranking hits that felt a lot like a penalty.
If your site experienced a heavy hit during this period, the only course of action you could take is to analyse your link profile and identify drops in traffic with suspect inbound or outbound links.
To prevent any nasty surprises with updates like this (or link penalties), run regular link audits to identify low-quality or potentially harmful links in your profile. Remove anything that looks suspicious and follow Google’s guidelines to protect yourself from future link spam updates.
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