Spam Reports are not for Manual Actions, Says Google

Manual actions are penalties that Google employees can assign to individual sites for violating the company’s webmaster guidelines.

After filling out a spam report, we expect Google to issue a manual action against the site we’re reporting. But according to the search and advertising giant, that’s not always the case.

Admittedly, some spam reports result in manual actions. However, most Google penalties come from the internal team’s regular effort to detect spam and improve search results.

In other words, Google only uses spam reports to improve its spam detection algorithms. The reports help the search company identify things that the automated spam detection system may have missed.

Google’s Gary Illyes clarified things in a recent post on the Google webmaster blog.

Illyes wrote:

“Today, we’re updating our Help Center articles to reflect this approach better: we use spam reports only to improve our spam detection algorithms.”

There’s more.

Using Spam Reports to Improve the Spam Detection Algorithm

Google’s automated spam detection system is an effective way to catch spam. But it’s still far from perfect. That’s why reporting is essential for improving the system.

Now, when you submit a spam report, Google will use it to figure out ways to improve its search algorithm. Besides, the search engine may not use the information to penalize any specific site.

That means the website or page you reported is unlikely to drop in search ranking due to the spam report itself.

Instead, Google will use the report to analyze trends and patterns in spammy content. Then, it’ll use the result of this analysis to develop a better spam detection system for the search engine.

According to Google, the best way to fight spam on search is to rely on high-quality content from the web community. Also, the search engine must be able to surface these content through ranking.

“Our spam detection systems work with our regular ranking systems,” says Illyes. “And spam reports help us continue to improve both, so we very much appreciate them.”