A link spam update is an announced improvement to how Google detects and discounts unnatural links. It differs from a general spam update, which covers other violations of the spam policies.
At a glance
- Started
- July 26, 2021 (first link spam update)
- Completed
- January 12, 2023 (latest listed, began December 14, 2022)
- Type
- Spam update (link spam)
- Affects
- Paid links and sites that only pass on links
- Confirmed by
- yes
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What happens in a link spam update?
Google’s documentation says that when its systems remove the effect of spammy links, the ranking benefit those links produced is lost. Removing the links afterward may not bring an improvement, because the benefit is gone. Other spam updates differ here, since a site can recover over months.
The first link spam update started on July 26, 2021. The most recent update that Google’s Search Status Dashboard labels as a link spam update started on December 14, 2022 and ran 29 days there. Google’s announcement post said it would take about two weeks. Google used SpamBrain, its AI-based spam prevention system, to identify unnatural link patterns and the sites behind them, such as paid links or pages that exist only to pass on links.
Rankings can fall when links stop counting, even though the site itself is not penalized (assumption).
- Google announces the completion of Caffeine, its new web indexing system. Google says it delivers 50 percent fresher results than the previous index.Source: googleblog.blogspot.com
- Google announces a ranking change against low-quality and copied content that noticeably affects 11.8% of queries. Google later refers to the system by its nickname “Panda”.Source: googleblog.blogspot.com
- Google improves how it decides when to favour recent results. According to Google the change affects roughly 35 percent of searches and builds on Caffeine.Source: googleblog.blogspot.com
- Google launches a change that looks at page layout. Pages with little content and many ads above the fold may rank lower.Source: developers.google.com
- Google announces a change against webspam, later nicknamed “Penguin”. It affects about 3.1% of English queries and roughly 3% of German queries.Source: developers.google.com
- Hummingbird, which Google describes as a major improvement to its overall ranking systems.Source: developers.google.com
- Panda becomes part of the core ranking systems. Google now lists it among its retired systems.Source: developers.google.com
- Google launches RankBrain, the first deep learning system used in Search. It relates the words in a query to real-world concepts.Source: blog.google
- Google starts rolling out the mobile-friendly update, boosting mobile-friendly pages in mobile search results. The industry unofficially calls it “Mobilegeddon”.Source: developers.google.com
- Penguin becomes part of the core algorithm and now works in real time. Before that, the list of affected sites was only refreshed periodically.Source: developers.google.com
- Google introduces neural matching. The system helps relate queries to pages through underlying concepts.Source: blog.google
- Launch of SpamBrain, Google’s AI-based spam prevention system. Google says it identified nearly six times more spam sites in 2021 than in 2020.Source: developers.google.com
- Google applies BERT to ranking and featured snippets. At launch it affects about one in ten English searches in the US.Source: blog.google
- Google presents passage ranking, which can assess individual passages of a page for a query. Google expects it to improve 7 percent of queries.Source: blog.google
- First product reviews update. It rewards in-depth product reviews and initially covers English-language reviews only.Source: developers.google.com
- Google introduces MUM, a model trained across 75 languages. Google calls it 1,000 times more powerful than BERT.Source: blog.google
- First link spam update. It aims to identify and nullify link spam across multiple languages and rolls out over two weeks.Source: developers.google.com
- With the helpful content update, Google aims to show more original, helpful content written for people.Source: status.search.google.com
- December 2022 helpful content update. Google says it improves the classifier and works globally in all languages.Source: status.search.google.com
- The product reviews update becomes the reviews update. Google says it now covers reviews of products, services and other things.Source: status.search.google.com
- September 2023 helpful content update. Google says it improves the classifier again.Source: status.search.google.com
- November 2023 reviews update. As the reviews system is now improved at a regular pace, Google no longer posts future updates on the Status Dashboard.Source: status.search.google.com
- The helpful content system becomes part of the core ranking systems. Google now lists it among its retired systems.Source: developers.google.com
- Three new spam policies against expired domain abuse, scaled content abuse and site reputation abuse. The March 2024 spam update launches the same day.Source: developers.google.com
- The site reputation abuse policy takes effect. Google had given site owners time to prepare since March.Source: developers.google.com
- In the US antitrust case against Google, the court describes Navboost as a signal that memorises which documents users click for a query. This is a court document, not a Google publication.Source: storage.courtlistener.com
- Google tightens the site reputation abuse policy. First-party involvement does not change the assessment when third-party content exploits the host site’s ranking signals.Source: developers.google.com
A selection, not a complete list. Core and spam updates since November 2021 have their own timeline. Names such as Florida (2003), Pigeon (2014), Possum (2016), Fred (2017) and Medic (2018), as well as Payday Loan and EMD, come from the SEO industry. Their dates rest only on trade press reports and posts by Google employees on X; Google has not published a dated page about them. Last checked: .
- November 2021 spam update.Source: status.search.google.com
- November 2021 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- May 2022 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- September 2022 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- October 2022 spam update, global and for all languages.Source: status.search.google.com
- December 2022 link spam update, global and for all languages.Source: status.search.google.com
- March 2023 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- August 2023 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- October 2023 spam update, global, with improved coverage in languages including Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi and Chinese.Source: status.search.google.com
- October 2023 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- November 2023 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- March 2024 spam update.Source: status.search.google.com
- March 2024 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- June 2024 spam update.Source: status.search.google.com
- August 2024 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- November 2024 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- December 2024 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- December 2024 spam update, global and for all languages.Source: status.search.google.com
- March 2025 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- June 2025 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- August 2025 spam update, global and for all languages.Source: status.search.google.com
- December 2025 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- March 2026 spam update, global and for all languages.Source: status.search.google.com
- March 2026 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- May 2026 core update.Source: status.search.google.com
- June 2026 spam update, global and for all languages.Source: status.search.google.com
- August 2026 spam update, global and for all languages.Source: status.search.google.com
- September 2026 spam update, global and for all languages.Source: status.search.google.com
All core and spam updates listed in the Google Search Status Dashboard (Ranking) since November 2021. Each period runs from release to the reported end of the rollout; the dashboard uses US Pacific time. The dashboard does not list older updates; where Google dated them, they appear in the ranking systems timeline. Last checked: .
Example
A site relied on many links from article directories and paid guest posts. After a link spam update these links pass no value, and rankings for the affected queries drop.
FAQ
How can I tell whether a link spam update is running? Google reports ranking updates on the Search Status Dashboard under Ranking.
Sources
- Google Search spam updates and your site – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
- December 2022 link spam update – Google Search Central Blogdevelopers.google.com
- Google Search Status Dashboard, Rankingstatus.search.google.com
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