Black hat SEO

What counts as spam at Google?

Google defines spam as techniques used to deceive users or manipulate its search systems into featuring content prominently. The current introduction also names attempts to manipulate generative AI responses in Google Search. The spam policies list these categories:

• Cloaking
• Doorway abuse
• Expired domain abuse
• Hacked content
• Hidden text and link abuse
• Keyword stuffing
• Link spam
• Machine-generated traffic
• Malicious practices
• Misleading functionality
• Scaled content abuse
• Scraping
• Site reputation abuse
• Sneaky redirects
• Thin affiliation
• User-generated spam

What are the consequences?

Google states that violating the policies can make content rank lower or disappear from results. It detects violations with automated systems and human review. A human review can result in a manual action, which Search Console reports. After fixing the problem, site owners can request a reconsideration.

Example

A page shows keyword-heavy text in white on a white background. Visitors never see it, but the crawler reads it. That is hidden text, one of the practices Google lists.

FAQ

Does black hat SEO still work? Search Engine Journal argues that Google is good at identifying and penalizing it. Google’s documents describe consequences but give no success rate.

Are paid links always black hat? Google treats paid links as link spam when they are meant to influence ranking and are not marked with rel=“sponsored” or rel=“nofollow”.

Last updated: October 7, 2026