Google Delivered Over 4 Million Manual Action Penalties Last Year

Google highlighted on its Webmaster Central blog today some achievements the company has made in fighting web spam in 2015. In addition, some interesting stats were revealed about hacked sites, and overall quality of web content.

• In 2015 there was a 180% increase in the number of websites being hacked, compared to the same time period last year.
• There was an increase in the number of sites with thin, low quality content that adds little value to the web.
• For the most part, Google’s algorithms tackled web spam and improved the quality of the search experience for users.
• Google rolled out an algorithm update specifically for targeting hacked spam.
• Spam not dealt with by algorithms was tackled manually; more than 4.3 million messages to webmasters notifying them of manual actions.
• There was a 33% increase in the number of sites with successful reconsideration requests.
• More than 400,000 spam reports sent from around the world
  • Google acted on 65% of them
  • 80% of those acted on were considered to be spam

Google will continue to improve its spam fighting technology to keep the web clean and safe for searchers. Google’s Webmaster Help Forum and office hours Hangouts are also excellent opportunities to communicate directly with Google about web spam, or any other webmaster-related topic on your mind.

Source:https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-delivered-4-million-manual-action-penalties-last-year/162826/