So getting your website reporting for spam to Google probably does nothing...

[jamie3000]

So it turns out if someone reports your website to Google for spam its just used to improve their automated anti-spam efforts and does not lead to a manual review.

https://searchengineland.com/google...pam-reports-are-not-for-manual-actions-337192

 

[polecat]

Actually it can get a site disindexed if someone does it right it's a common approach by some people who do negative SEO attack some of the time

 

[fasttrak]

Happy with that, if true (I never believe a word they say!) Good that it can't be used neg seo by cretins.

 

[jamie3000]

Happy with that, if true (I never believe a word they say!) Good that it can't be used neg seo by cretins.

Yeh there is always an "if true" with Google!

 

[TheVigilante]

Thought if multiple people report the site they would notice it so why even have it in the first place

 

[fasttrak]

Thought if multiple people report the site they would notice it so why even have it in the first place

My guess is that Google's original intention was to use the reports as part of their manual check lead generation but underestimated peoples pettiness and the number of incoming reports. It proved inefficient to target individual sites so turned it into an input to improve their AI systems. Again, my guess is that the reports are largely untrustworthy, so if they are used as an input they have a very low score.

 

[xReminisce]

What if a few dozen "Super Legit" or "Personal' google account users report for spam on a certain site.
I am sure that will still trigger some sort of manual action.

 

[Mr Positive]

I’m sure they’ll be taking some action automatically but of couse they won’t admit it because it would lead to more negative seo

 

[HustleTong]

Google is just being frank with hatred towards webmasters.

 

[hideath]

They simply can't handle these reports manually,
The web is getting huge & even Google can't have control over it,
Their best shot is to use some algorithm to deal with such cases

 

[bartosimpsonio]

So it turns out if someone reports your website to Google for spam its just used to improve their automated anti-spam efforts and does not lead to a manual review.

https://searchengineland.com/google...pam-reports-are-not-for-manual-actions-337192

Their main job is to keep SEO's in the dark as much as possible.

Obviously they DO use those spam reports for manual actions. It's been done publicly in fact. IIRC one of their antispam guys used to ask people to report spam on that form, then they'd take manual action.

 

[awesomewebsites]

I think that if a lot of people report one site, they will surely have a look for policy violations. That is the purpose of report button.