How Google fights spam and protects users in the search results

Many web pages found within the Google index are extremely useful and the results which Google shows usually provide answers to our questions instantly. However, there are websites out there which have been created to simply deceive users or provide incorrect information. Google has to find and fight against this spam every day to ensure that users are protected and only land on reliable websites.

How does Google prevent spam from reaching users?

Google has been fighting spam ever since the search engine launched but recently, Google introduced and started utilising Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help combat spam across the web. Last year Google built their very own spam-fighting AI tool that is able to catch both known, and new, spam trends. As a result of this, Google has been able to reduce the number of web pages with auto-generated and scraped content by more than 80% compared to a couple of years ago.

Hacked spam was still a widespread issue in 2020 for Google. Even though a large number of websites remain vulnerable, the search engine has improved its ability to detect hacked spam by more than 50%. Unfortunately, hackers will continue to exploit loopholes therefore having good website security is vital for protection. 

Every day Google discovers 40 billion spammy pages. When crawling new pages, Google automatically detects spam and removes it from the top of the funnel (as seen above) before it can even reach the index.  The search engine also analyses content that already sits within the index. Each time a user makes a search, Google will scan the web pages it’s going to show in the SERPs. If the systems think any page may contain spam; it will be removed from the index. Due to these thorough checks, an estimated 99% of visits from Google Search are completely spam-free. 

Other Protection Online

Not only do Google have to deal with webpage spam, but they also have to deal with online fraud. Scammers create low quality websites that keyword stuff, include logos of the brands they’re imitating and have phone numbers they want users to call. However, the AI and algorithms ensure that these types of results rarely show up, helping to keep users safe online. Google will continue to monitor and protect users, even though spammers are constantly developing new techniques to go unnoticed within the search results.