Google releases October 2022 spam update

Google is rolling out a new search ranking algorithm update targeting the more spammy side of the search results. The company is calling this update the “October 2022 spam update.” It should take about a week to fully roll out and be noticed in the search results.

Google said this update is global and affects all languages.

What are spam updates. Google wrote “While Google’s automated systems to detect search spam are constantly operating, we occasionally make notable improvements to how they work. When we do, we refer to this as a spam update and share when they happen on our list of Google Search ranking updates. For example, SpamBrain is our AI-based spam-prevention system. From time-to-time, we improve that system to make it better at spotting spam and to help ensure it catches new types of spam. Sites that see a change after a spam update should review our spam policies to ensure they are complying with those. Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. Making changes may help a site improve if our automated systems learn over a period of months that the site complies with our spam policies.”

The announcement. Google announced this on Twitter saying “Today we released the October 2022 spam update.”

Previous updates. Before this, the most recent confirmed Google spam update was the November 2021 spam update. Prior to that was back in July 2021 named the link spam update. Before that was the July 2021 core update, followed by the June 2021 core update, then part one and part two of the spam updates in June 2021. It’s been quite a year of updates.

Why we care. If you notice large ranking or traffic changes from your organic Google search results, you may have been hit by this spam update. Spam updates target specific guideline violations. Google did not say if this was links, content or other forms of spam, but rather just said it is spam-related in general.

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Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.