Source: SEO – Practical Ecommerce by Ann Smarty. Read the original article
TL;DR Summary of Google’s August 2025 Spam Algorithm Update and Its Impact on Search Console Data
The August 2025 Google algorithm update primarily targets spammy web pages, impacting site traffic and search rankings. The concurrent removal of the #num=100 query parameter in Search Console complicates impression and click data analysis. Sites affected by spam updates often see sharp declines in clicks, recoverable after addressing spam violations like cloaking, keyword stuffing, and scraped content. Google’s spam policies focus on on-site content quality rather than backlinks for this update.
Optimixed’s Overview: Understanding the Latest Google Spam Update and Its Effects on Website Performance
Key Takeaways from Google’s August 2025 Spam Algorithm Update
Google’s recent update, finalized in August 2025, emphasizes combating spammy content to improve search quality. This update coincided with the removal of the #num=100 query parameter in Search Console, which lowered impression counts, making performance data harder to interpret.
- Impact Measurement: The best metric to assess impact is the “Clicks” statistic in the Search Console’s Performance report, as impressions may be misleading.
- Traffic Effects: Sites affected by the update typically experience steep traffic drops lasting several weeks, with recovery possible through remediation.
- Spam Focus: This update targets on-site spam tactics and does not include backlink-related spam signals.
Google’s Core Spam Policies Explained
Google’s spam policies cover a range of deceptive or manipulative tactics that can negatively affect rankings:
- Cloaking and Sneaky Redirects: Showing different content to users and search engines or redirecting only users.
- Doorway Pages: Creating multiple pages targeting similar keywords instead of grouping by intent.
- Expired Domain Abuse: Exploiting authority from expired domains, which is hard to recover from without a domain change.
- Hidden Text and Link Abuse: Concealing text or links by matching font and background colors.
- Keyword Stuffing: Overusing keywords to manipulate rankings, though this is increasingly rare.
- Machine-Generated and Scaled Content: Using AI or automated tools to produce bulk content without quality control.
- Scraping: Republishing stolen content from other sites.
- Site Reputation Abuse: Publishing irrelevant content to leverage site authority.
- Thin Affiliation: Affiliate sites duplicating product descriptions without added value.
- Misleading Functionality: Pages promising features but delivering ads or other unintended actions.
- User-Generated Spam: Excessive promotional or inappropriate content in comments or forums.
Recovery Insights
Recovery from spam-related traffic drops often requires thorough cleanup of offending content and restructuring of site architecture. Although recovery timelines can span months, improvements do not depend on subsequent core updates but on proper adherence to Google’s spam policies.
