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Google has announced the December 2024 spam update.
The updateexpected to be completed within a week, comes amid ongoing industry debate over the effectiveness of Google’s anti-spam measures.
This December update wraps up a year of anti-spam measures, including a spam update in June and a core update in March, which targeted offending websites and aimed to reduce “unhelpful” content by 40%.
It’s also worth mentioning that this update follows closely December Core Update.
Today we released the December 2024 Spam Update.
It may take up to 1 week to complete and we will post on the Google Search Status Dashboard when the rollout is complete: https://t.co/L7n9n3Nh6X
— Google Central Search (@googlesearchc) December 19, 2024
This year has seen an unprecedented frequency of major algorithm updates, with major updates in March, August, November and December.
The August update, which took nearly three weeks to complete, targeted low-value SEO content while promoting high-quality material.
December’s core update, launched on December 12, came unusually close to the November update, with Google explaining that different systems are often improved in parallel.
This year marked a shift in Google’s approach to spam detection and prevention with three major policy updates.
Introduced in May 2024, Google began targeting “parasitic SEO” practices where third-party content exploits the authority of established domains.
This update mainly affected:
The policy change led to significant losses, including several prominent publishers who were subject to manual actions for hosting third-party content without sufficient oversight.
Google’s increased focus on expired domain manipulation addressed the following:
Previously known as “auto-generated spam”, these rebranded policies have been expanded to include:
See more: A detailed overview of Google’s spam policy updates and what’s changed
With December’s core update finished rolling out and a new spam update now underway, brace yourself for another round of potential ranking fluctuations for the rest of the year.
The spam update is expected to be completed next week, with progress being tracked via Google’s search status dashboard.
Featured Image: JHVE Photography/Shutterstock