Google to Step up SEO Spam Penalties in 2011

Here’s a snippit of what Matt Cutts had to say:

As we’ve increased both our size and freshness in recent months, we’ve naturally indexed a lot of good content and some spam as well. To respond to that challenge, we recently launched a redesigned document-level classifier that makes it harder for spammy on-page content to rank highly. The new classifier is better at detecting spam on individual web pages, e.g., repeated spammy words—the sort of phrases you tend to see in junky, automated, self-promoting blog comments. We’ve also radically improved our ability to detect hacked sites, which were a major source of spam in 2010. And we’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content. We’ll continue to explore ways to reduce spam, including new ways for users to give  about spammy and low-quality sites.

Matt went onto say that it is a common misconception that Google doesn’t take as strong of action against spammy content in their search index if those websites are serving Google ads. I can contest that this is false with the launch of XIOPE which was quickly gunned down by Google for web spam – a lesson accepted and not repeated.

• Google absolutely takes action on sites that violate our quality guidelines regardless of whether they have ads powered by Google;
• Displaying Google ads does not help a site’s rankings in Google; and
• Buying Google ads does not increase a site’s rankings in Google’s search results.

Some Denver Search Engine Optimization providers dabble in spam but most tend to avoid. 2011 will in fact be an interesting play-on for the search engine marketing industry as a whole.

Sean Hakes
CEO & Sr. SEO Strategist