Google Admits to Taking Action on 65% of User Generated Spam Reports

In the ‘Google Actions Panel’ of SMX West, Google employee Juan Felipe Rincon said that Google takes action on around sixty-five percent of the 35,000 user-generated spam reports which are submitted to Google on a monthly basis. According to the statistics presented by Rincon at SMX West, Google receives around seven million spam reports each month, including both user and non-user generated.

In the panel, Rincon added that 65% of these submissions are spam, therefore action is taken on a manual basis when it comes to these reports. He also reported that Google prioritizes these spam reports based on how significant they can be to their users, Google searchers. Some users are better than others at spam reporting, and Google will prioritise those spam reports which are reported by users that have proven good at reporting spam.

Why Only 65%?

One of the big questions that many users wanted to know is why Google do not target and take action on 100% of the 35,000 user-generated spam reports which are generated each month. Simply put, Rincon said that the percentage of reports which don’t require action are most often not actually spam. Giving the statistics, Rincon said that whilst around 80% of the reports will come back as being spam, it’s only 65% of them that require manual action to be taken. 20% of the reports generated are not spam.

How Google Prioritises

As well as prioritising those reports which are submitted by users that have a good track record of submitting useful and accurate spam reports, Google will also take into account spam reports which are likely to have an impact on a larger number of users. When it comes to choosing which spam reports to take action on first, Google take a lot of things into consideration including the reputation of the reporter, the impact on the spam on internet users, the page, the site, other sites owned by the webmaster, and the industry which it is in. Once all of these factors have been taken into consideration, Google will then make a decision regarding assigning manual action.

About Google and Spam

According to Google support, they are constantly working on spam in order to improve search. The Google Support site reports that they employ analysts, statisticians and researchers who take a data-driven approach to evaluate search quality on a full-time basis. Google says that ever since there has been search engines, there has also been people who will try and trick their way to the top of search engine results – which is bad for searchers as it results in the more relevant websites being hidden under the irrelevant results. Google says that for the most part, their algorithms are highly effective at detecting spam – a fact which is backed up by the statistics. But, in some cases automatic detection and removal of spam is not possible which is why Google is also willing to listen to user-generated spam reports and take manual action to remove spam from search in order to protect the quality of their indexes.

With this in mind, it is vital that your website follows the best SEO practices in order to avoid manual action.