Google Spam Update 2022 - analysis according to my findings... ❌❌❌

• Sites in very popular/competitive niches have been hit more. Tech, pets, VPNs, etc. It seems like Google has given these positions to big and rich "network" sites.
• Google doesn't detect AI writing, per se. It's mostly looking for thin, duplicate content. This is proven by both AI and non-AI websites have being hit, while some of my pure AI sites are going up.
• I want to emphasize this - Google can't detect AI, and I'm 100% certain of this. It uses simple language metrics to detect content that is characteristic of AI writers, like repeating sentences, overstuffing with keywords, a keyword in every H2, and such. I'm not 100% sure what the metrics are precisely. Give me one more week to analyze that.
• Low-effort AI sites in less popular niches are still going up.
• MAJOR CHANGE - Google has updated its algorithm to affect non-English websites too. No more easy rankings with super crappy content in French, German, Italian, etc.
• The update seems to be over.
• Sites that have been copy-pasting content have been almost entirely destroyed - copying reviews, comments, snippets - without changing them.
• Sites that have been hit by the algo have no manual penalty in GSC.
• VERY IMPORTANT - Sites that "look" like spam have been hit. Weak EAT, ugly theme, stock pictures. Sites that are AI/spam that "look" good seem to be up. I'm not trying to say that Google is manual-checking sites. There is no way they could do this in a few days. This happened to small sites too. There is some kind of text on-page analysis algorithm, or maybe just user signals that Google is taking into account very heavily when ranking sites now.

Sartre said:

What do you guys think about this update?
Any ideas about the exact metrics Google is using with their algorithm?

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xelex said:

when did this update come out? I did see my rankings absolutely tank in last week. I've got an adult tube site with fully embedded content, i.e. nothing original, not even titles.

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MrNimbus said:

One thing i've noticed from checking manually is that some search results are now absolutely horrible.

As many WH sites took big hits (myself included), there are now some search results which are completely irrelevant and off topic for basic enquiries. These search terms are generally low volume, so big sites have not written about them, but are now ranking well for them, despite not being relevant to the search.

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Sartre said:

Hey guys,

It's been a problematic update for a lot of people. Probably the toughest one since Panda.

As some of you know, I own a lot of both black hat and white hat sites, and I create AI sites for clients.

A couple of my own sites have been hit (both BH and WH), and a couple of my clients have also suffered, which is always very painful to deal with because on the one hand they are taking a gamble buying black hat AI sites, on the other hand, I don't want unhappy clients.

I'm in a unique position to have access to over 100 Google Search Consoles and Google Analytics, and over the last 2 days, I've been running SEO audits and statistical analysis to find correlations.
It has been a lot of stress.

These are my findings:

• Sites in very popular/competitive niches have been hit more. Tech, pets, VPNs, etc. It seems like Google has given these positions to big and rich "network" sites.
• Google doesn't detect AI writing, per se. It's mostly looking for thin, duplicate content. This is proven by both AI and non-AI websites have being hit, while some of my pure AI sites are going up.
• I want to emphasize this - Google can't detect AI, and I'm 100% certain of this. It uses simple language metrics to detect content that is characteristic of AI writers, like repeating sentences, overstuffing with keywords, a keyword in every H2, and such. I'm not 100% sure what the metrics are precisely. Give me one more week to analyze that.
• Low-effort AI sites in less popular niches are still going up.
• MAJOR CHANGE - Google has updated its algorithm to affect non-English websites too. No more easy rankings with super crappy content in French, German, Italian, etc.
• The update seems to be over.
• Sites that have been copy-pasting content have been almost entirely destroyed - copying reviews, comments, snippets - without changing them.
• Sites that have been hit by the algo have no manual penalty in GSC.
• VERY IMPORTANT - Sites that "look" like spam have been hit. Weak EAT, ugly theme, stock pictures. Sites that are AI/spam that "look" good seem to be up. I'm not trying to say that Google is manual-checking sites. There is no way they could do this in a few days. This happened to small sites too. There is some kind of text on-page analysis algorithm, or maybe just user signals that Google is taking into account very heavily when ranking sites now.

I'm adapting my model to match my findings in the next few days.

You can see how traffic looks on the sites that I've created for my journey this year here: https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/7db9eb94-334e-4ba1-9847-d0155f291a83/page/LuRfC - unfortunately Data Studio has quite a big lag, but we will see it clearly in a few days

What do you guys think about this update?
Any ideas about the exact metrics Google is using with their algorithm?

Good luck to y'all!

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tazarbm said:

not many such guys left unfortunately

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vikasind said:

can you tell some more guys?

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MrNimbus said:

I haven't done any statistical analysis because I don't have the data or skillset, but can confirm this is true:

"Sites in very popular/competitive niches have been hit more. Tech, pets, VPNs, etc. It seems like Google has given these positions to big and rich "network" sites."

One thing i've noticed from checking manually is that some search results are now absolutely horrible.

As many WH sites took big hits (myself included), there are now some search results which are completely irrelevant and off topic for basic enquiries. These search terms are generally low volume, so big sites have not written about them, but are now ranking well for them, despite not being relevant to the search.

I've also heard about some people getting deindexed for no reason too but thankfully that hasn't happened to me so far.

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tazarbm said:

one of the few experts of the forum who still shares valuable info for free (not many such guys left unfortunately). God bless you @Sartre, your posts are truly appreciated!

I have 2 questions if you don't mind answering (if you do mind answering it's fine, you always give valuable insights anyway so I won't mind if you don't answer)...

1) any particular sub-niches of the tech industry that have been targeted by this update? The tech industry consists of dozens of profitable niches with high search volumes, so which ones did you notice have been hit the most?

2) which niches are you referring to when you say "less popular" niches? Or, if you don't want to give the niches away (I can totally understand this), can you at least give the industries away? Or at least 2-3 of them? Like for example, "stop smoking" is a (sub)niche in the health / self-help industries, so you don't need to say "stop smoking", you only need to mention the health / self-help industry, that's good enough for me

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xelex said:

when did this update come out? I did see my rankings absolutely tank in last week. I've got an adult tube site with fully embedded content, i.e. nothing original, not even titles.

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PrgnIM said:

Hi, with this update in mind, would you recommend starting a fully AI/spam site, or starting an edited/proofread AI site with some manual editing and plagiarism checking to avoid issues with this Google update?

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Guybrushthepirate said:

Mine is a generic (not targeting a specific niche) PPA website, with decent content (articles are rewritten by humans, +1000 words and +95% unique according to Copyscape) and so far about 50% of my articles have been de-indexed.

Also the site looks legit, with a Facebook page and a Twitter accounts which are updated regularly every time a new post is published (with hashtags and images).

I am wandering if using exact match keywords (PAA) in headers and very close-to-exact-match keywords for internal links may have caused that.

I am still struggling to find a pattern (and try to fix that), as the articles that are still indexed use the same formula than the ones that have been de-indexed.

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Daemon Targaryen said:

Thanks for the valuable insights. I noticed something about the H2 tag from studying other websites. It deranks you when you use only the keyword as H2 but they don't derank when the keyword is mixed with other words even if all H2s contain a keyword.

When you say they hit everything that's copied (like snippets), do you also mean copied PAA answers? Those get hit too? If yes it means scraping PAA is over.

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