Web spam (also search spam or SEO spam) describes practices that manipulate search results or mislead users instead of helping them. This entry covers the search engine meaning. It has nothing to do with unwanted email.
What counts as web spam?
Google’s spam policies for web search list the practices it treats as spam. They include cloaking, doorway abuse, expired domain abuse, hacked content, hidden text and links, keyword stuffing, link spam, malware and other malicious practices, misleading functionality, scaled content abuse, scraping, the site reputation policy for third-party content, sneaky redirects, thin affiliation, and user-generated spam.
Spam gets onto a site in two ways. Site owners use it deliberately to influence rankings. Or attackers exploit a vulnerability and add it to someone else’s site, for example as hidden links or generated pages. Google lists hacked content as its own category.
How does Google respond?
Google says that pages violating the policies may rank lower or not appear in results at all. Google relies on automated systems and, where needed, human review. A manual action is shown to the site owner, who can submit a reconsideration request after fixing the problem.
Example
A common pattern on hacked sites is a block of hidden links that visitors never see:
<div style="position:absolute; left:-9999px">
<a href="https://spam.example/cheap-watches">Buy cheap watches</a>
</div>
Such insertions often exist only in the source code. They tend to show up when someone inspects the HTML or notices unfamiliar queries in Search Console performance data.
FAQ
Is every aggressive SEO tactic spam? No. Google lists the categories one by one in its policies, and what matters is whether the practice is meant to manipulate results.
Sources
- Spam policies for Google web search - Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
- Webspam - Ahrefs SEO glossaryahrefs.com
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