Google is promising to take on "low-quality" spam content appearing on its search engine. The company has announced new tactics to "fight against spammers" with key changes including improved quality ranking through "algorithmic enhancements" and additional spam policies.
In a statement released by the tech giant on Tuesday, Google said the changes will be implemented to "reduce unoriginal content in search results" and "continue delivering useful content and connecting people with high-quality websites."
In essence, Google will refine some of its core ranking systems to help better understand which web pages are helpful to users, continuing work it's been doing for the last couple of years. Additionally, the company will expand its existing spam-fighting systems, implementing new policies to tackle manipulated search rankings, expired domain abuse, and site reputation abuse. The latter means looking at websites that may host "low-quality" content from third-party hosts. This kind of content, writes Google, "can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations" for the kind of content on such websites.
Earlier this year, a study by German researchers noted that Google was caught in a "constant battle" with SEO spam, despite improvements over the course of their research. The study also alerted to the presence of AI-generated spam, which will likely make search results even worse. A Google spokesperson told Mashable at the time that the study "doesn’t reflect the overall quality and helpfulness of Search for the billions of queries."
