Not in docsD3-C236
Google's slide said that in 2023 Google ran more than 800,000 search quality tests; the speaker added that a more recent figure might exist.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Day 3 · Friday 2 October 2026 · 12:00
What are quality updates
Why Search changes: feature updates, core updates and spam updates, and what recovery means. The speaker is not named.
Shown on screen 15
Confirmed by docsD3-C237
Google's slide said Google made more than 4,700 launches to Search in 2023; the speaker rounded this to close to 5,000.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
- Repeats D3-C149 Day 3: Google's slide said that in 2023 Google ran 719,326 search quality tests, 124,942 side-by-side experiments…
Consistent with docsD3-C239
Google's slide, headed 'In 2023, there were...', said 40 billion spammy pages are detected every day.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo
- How we fought Search spam on Google in 2020
- Detecting spam to bring you relevant and reliable results
- Extends D3-C197 Day 3: Google's quality talk said Google discovers tens of billions of spam pages every day.
Not in docsD3-C242
Google's slide gave three reasons why Search changes: new content formats, the growing breadth of content on the web, and content issues such as spam.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Not in docsD3-C243
Google's slide said that as content formats and types become more widespread, search users might start looking for them, and if enough people become interested Google might launch one or more Search features for those formats.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Consistent with docsD3-C244
Google's slide said the more people post on the internet, the more saturated topics become and the harder it gets to find the highest quality content, so Google might launch core updates to improve the quality and relevance of search results.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Things
Consistent with docsD3-C245
Google's slide said Google is not perfect and spammers find loopholes to make low-effort content rank high in Search, so Google might launch targeted algorithms for a more level playing field in its search results.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Confirmed by docsD3-C277
Google's slide 'Spam, spam and spam!' listed five spam types, cloaking, doorways, scraped content, link spam and hacked content, and pointed to goo.gle/spam-policy for more.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Used byrequirements DEV-SPM-03, DEV-SPM-04
Confirmed by docsD3-C278
Google's slide defined cloaking as presenting different content to users and to search engines with the intent to manipulate search rankings and mislead users.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo
Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-03glossary term Cloaking and doorways
Confirmed by docsD3-C279
Google's slide defined doorways as sites or pages created to rank for specific, similar search queries that lead users to intermediate pages less useful than the final destination.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo
Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-03glossary term Cloaking and doorways
Consistent with docsD3-C280
Google's slide said sites with mostly scraped content, taken from other sites without additional useful services or content, may not provide added value to users.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo
Consistent with docsD3-C281
Google's slide said Google uses links as an important factor in determining the relevancy of web pages, and any links intended to manipulate rankings in Google Search results may be considered link spam.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo
Consistent with docsD3-C282
Google's slide defined hacked content as content placed on a site without permission through security vulnerabilities, said cleaning it up is hard and prevention is key, and linked to goo.gle/hack-tips.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo
Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-04
Consistent with docsD3-C289
Google's 'Recoveries' slide said that to recover from a spam update a site should remove the kind of spam Google described in its blog announcements of the update.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Things
Used byglossary term Spam update
Consistent with docsD3-C298
Google's 'Recoveries' slide advised sites affected by a core update to keep doing a great job, look at what competitors are doing better and learn from sites that are doing better.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo
Things
Said on stage 37
Google began as a Stanford research project in 1995: Larry Page and Sergey Brin built a search engine on an algorithm they invented, PageRank, and called the engine BackRub.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
Used byglossary term PageRank and BackRub
BackRub was renamed Google when it launched officially, which the speaker dated to 1997-98.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
The speaker opened the talk on why Search changes by noting that Google's logo has changed only a handful of times in about 30 years.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Google says it constantly evaluates how Search is doing, including whether users like the results and whether they can accomplish what they want on Search.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Compared with the simple early-2000s Google results page, which showed a few expected sites, today's results page for the same query adds exploration features such as People Also Ask.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Google added exploration features to its results pages because users' behaviour evolved: people wanted to explore more of the topic they were searching for.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
StageD3-C248
The speaker called launches of new Search features 'feature updates', a personal label coined the year before, not an official Google term.
“I like to call that feature updates. It's not an official name.”
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
The speaker said that without new Search features, search results would become obsolete and users would no longer find them useful.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Every kind of Search update, whether a feature launch, a core update or a spam update, has the same goal: satisfying users' information needs with better results.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Things
In the mid-1990s the web was small enough to list in one manually edited directory; by the time BackRub was being built, directories could no longer find information on the growing web, which is why Google was created.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
The speaker said the web keeps growing exponentially and named AI slop, low-quality AI-generated content, as one of the reasons.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Used byglossary term AI slop
When Google launched in 1997-98 its index held 25 million pages, at that time the biggest index of any search engine.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Google does not index every URL on the web; because it cannot index everything, it has to rank results better and better to satisfy users' information needs.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
- Repeats D2-C680 Day 2: Google's index is immense but finite, so Google cannot index every URL it finds on a web with a practically…
To show how much the web has grown, Google's deck compared result counts for the query 'durian': for every result in 2000 there were about 20,000 results in 2025.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Google stressed that core updates are not punitive: they are not meant to punish any site but to improve how results are surfaced.
“Core updates are not punitive.”
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
Used byglossary term Core update
Several times a year Google makes significant, broad changes to its search algorithms and systems, which it calls core updates.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
Used byglossary term Core update
Google announces core updates when they happen by posting them on the Google Search Status Dashboard.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
Used byglossary term Core update
Core updates do not target specific sites; they change how Google assesses certain properties of content.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
Used byglossary term Core update
A core update may reward pages that were previously under-rewarded, so when some pages go down after a core update, other pages must go up.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
Pages that perform worse after a core update usually do not violate Google's spam policies; Google has changed, perhaps slightly, how it thinks about quality.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
Google sometimes couples a core update with an update to its Search Quality Rater Guidelines.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
- Extends D3-C170 Day 3: Google's quality talk pointed to page 21 of the Search Quality Rater Guidelines for its definition of content…
The purpose of core updates is to improve the quality and relevance of search results for users.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Things
Answering the common question whether to fix individual pages or the whole site after a core update, Google advised taking a close look at the site as a whole and trying to be objective.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
Because owners struggle to judge their own site objectively, the speaker suggested asking someone else to review the site after a core update drop.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
To improve a site after a core update, check whether users can complete their information journey on the site and ask users directly, for example with customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys, then improve based on the answers.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
Site owners should check whether the site overall, not just individual pages, delivers helpful, reliable, people-first content.
“you should check if your site overall, not just individual pages, is delivering content that's helpful, reliable, and people-first”
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Google defines spam as web content designed to deceive users or to manipulate search results.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Google aims to keep more than 99% of search results free from spam and said it already achieves this, thanks to advances in AI.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
- How we fought Search spam on Google in 2020
- How we fought Search spam on Google in 2021
- How we fought spam on Google Search in 2022
- Repeats D2-C676 Day 2: Google's testing shows that, thanks to SpamBrain, more than 99% of visits from Search are now spam-free.
In the speaker's view, some of the egregious spam methods on the slide (cloaking, doorways, scraped content, link spam and hacked content) are not that common anymore or no longer matter much to Google.
“Some of these, I would say, are not that common anymore, or we don't care all that much about them.”
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Reviewing the spam slide, the speaker said link spam would probably be replaced with scaled content abuse as the spam type worth talking about today.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Things
Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-02
The number of ways to spam the web is close to infinite, and Google's spam policies describe some of the practices that deceive users.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
When spammers find loopholes that Google's systems miss, Google releases spam updates that change its systems to catch them.
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Things
- Extended by D3-C663 Day 3: Google estimated that a spam update affects sites within 1-2 days of the rollout, 1-2 weeks for continuous…
Spam updates target only spam: they go after sites that churn out millions of low-quality pages to make money, very likely not the site owners and SEOs in the audience.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
StageD3-C290
The speaker declined to give a timeline for recovering from a spam update, saying the update had targeted spam.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
A ranking drop after a core update is not a penalty, so technically there is no recovery from a core update in the way there is after a spam update.
“technically, and from a purely technical perspective, there's no recovery, because you were not penalized”
Speaker GoogleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Things
After a core update a site can win back some of its rankings by improving the site as a whole.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
- Extended by D3-C662 Day 3: Recovery after a core update typically takes 3 to 6 months once the site has put in work to regain traffic…
A drop after a core update can simply mean that a competitor now does better because Google rethought how it assesses quality as a whole.
Speaker GoogleEvidence transcript
Things
What Google's documentation says 13
Google's company history page says the Google story began in 1995 at Stanford, where Larry Page and Sergey Brin built a search engine that used links to judge the importance of pages, called it Backrub and soon renamed it Google; Google Inc. was founded in August 1998.
Publisher Google
Things
Used byglossary term PageRank and BackRub
Google's page on how it tests Search says that in 2023 it ran 719,326 search quality tests, 124,942 side-by-side experiments and 16,871 live traffic experiments, and made 4,781 launches.
Publisher Google Search (How Search Works)
Google's webspam report for 2020, published in April 2021, says Google discovers 40 billion spammy pages every day.
Publisher Search Central blog (29 April 2021)
A 2008 Official Google Blog post says the first Google index, in 1998, already had 26 million pages, and that the index reached one billion pages by 2000.
Publisher Official Google Blog (25 July 2008)
As of 3 October 2026, the Ranking history of Google's Search Status Dashboard lists two core updates in 2026 (March and May) and four spam updates (March, June, August and September).
Publisher Google Search Status Dashboard (Ranking incident history)
Things
Google's 2019 post on core updates says Google tests any broad core update before it goes live, including feedback from its search quality raters, whose data is not used directly in ranking.
Publisher Search Central blog (1 August 2019)
Google's core updates page recommends waiting at least a full week after a core update has finished rolling out before analysing Search Console data, then comparing that week with a week before the update started.
Publisher Google Search Central
Google's core updates page says a small drop in position after a core update (for example from 2 to 4) needs no drastic action, while a large drop (for example from 4 to 29) calls for a deeper assessment.
Publisher Google Search Central
Things
Google's spam updates page says its automated spam detection systems run constantly, and a notable improvement to them, such as to the AI-based SpamBrain system, is called a spam update and listed with Google's ranking updates.
Publisher Google Search Central
Things
Used byglossary term Spam update
- Extends D2-C670 Day 2: SpamBrain is central to Google's spam-fighting efforts and has been improved many times since its launch.
Google's spam updates page says that after a spam update, changes may help a site improve if Google's automated systems learn over a period of months that the site complies with its spam policies.
Publisher Google Search Central
Things
Google's spam updates page says that after a link spam update, fixing the site might not bring an improvement, because any ranking benefit the spammy links had generated is lost and cannot be regained.
Publisher Google Search Central
Things
Google's core updates page says improvements can take effect in a few days but may take several months for its systems to confirm that the site as a whole produces helpful content, sometimes only at the next core update.
Publisher Google Search Central
Things
Google's core updates page says Google also makes smaller core updates that are not announced, and these can also lift a site that has improved.
Publisher Google Search Central
Things
Analysis by the author 6
AnalysisD3-C241
Cite 40 billion spammy pages a day as Google's published figure, from its webspam report for 2020 and its How Search Works page: the slide's 'In 2023' heading does not make it a 2023 measurement, because the 2021 and 2022 reports give no daily count.
Author Ibrahim Anjro
AnalysisD3-C255
Quote the size of Google's first index as 26 million pages (1998), the figure in Google's own 2008 blog post; the 25 million said on stage is a rounded version of it.
Author Ibrahim Anjro
AnalysisD3-C276
Google's webspam reports measure the 99% figure as visits from Search (2020 and 2022 reports) or searches (2021 report) that are spam-free, not as search results; cite it as more than 99% of visits from Search being spam-free.
Author Ibrahim Anjro
AnalysisD3-C299
After a core update drop, plan a site-wide quality review instead of page-by-page fixes or a technical 'recovery': have someone outside the team assess the site, compare it with the pages that gained, and test whether users can finish their task, for example with short satisfaction surveys.
Author Ibrahim Anjro
Things
AnalysisD3-C300
Weight spam audits toward scaled content abuse: a Googler said that type would replace link spam on the slide, so review mass-produced pages, including AI-generated ones, before older link-building patterns.
Author Ibrahim Anjro
Things
Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-02
AnalysisD3-C301
For developers, Google's five listed spam types map to concrete checks: serve Googlebot the same content as users (cloaking), avoid near-identical location or keyword pages (doorways), add value to reused content (scraped content), and patch and monitor the CMS against injected pages and links (hacked content).
Author Ibrahim Anjro
Things
Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-03
Links to other sessions 10
- D3-C239 Day 3 · What are quality updates
Google's slide, headed 'In 2023, there were...', said 40 billion spammy pages are detected every day.
extendsStage D3-C197 Day 3 · How Google thinks about QualityGoogle's quality talk said Google discovers tens of billions of spam pages every day.
- Stage D3-C265 Day 3 · What are quality updates
Google sometimes couples a core update with an update to its Search Quality Rater Guidelines.
extendsStage D3-C170 Day 3 · How Google thinks about QualityGoogle's quality talk pointed to page 21 of the Search Quality Rater Guidelines for its definition of content quality by effort, originality, talent or skill and accuracy, noting that the document is updated from time to time.
- Stage D3-C284 Day 3 · What are quality updates
Reviewing the spam slide, the speaker said link spam would probably be replaced with scaled content abuse as the spam type worth talking about today.
extendsStage D3-C207 Day 3 · How Google thinks about QualityGoogle's quality talk listed recent updates to Google's spam policies: back button hijacking, scaled content abuse and manipulating AI responses.
- Docs D3-C287 Day 3 · What are quality updates
Google's spam updates page says its automated spam detection systems run constantly, and a notable improvement to them, such as to the AI-based SpamBrain system, is called a spam update and listed with Google's ranking updates.
extendsStage D2-C670 Day 2 · Calculating (some) signalsSpamBrain is central to Google's spam-fighting efforts and has been improved many times since its launch.
- D3-C662 Day 3 · How long does it take to..?
Recovery after a core update typically takes 3 to 6 months once the site has put in work to regain traffic, and up to 6 months to a year, until the next core update.
extendsStage D3-C294 Day 3 · What are quality updatesAfter a core update a site can win back some of its rankings by improving the site as a whole.
- D3-C663 Day 3 · How long does it take to..?
Google estimated that a spam update affects sites within 1-2 days of the rollout, 1-2 weeks for continuous processing (said on stage as 2 weeks on average) and months for batch refreshes.
extendsStage D3-C286 Day 3 · What are quality updatesWhen spammers find loopholes that Google's systems miss, Google releases spam updates that change its systems to catch them.
- Stage D3-C694 Day 3 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.
Scaled content abuse is becoming a problem again: in the early 2000s pages were churned out with Perl or PHP scripts, and now the same is done with LLMs.
extendsStage D3-C284 Day 3 · What are quality updatesReviewing the spam slide, the speaker said link spam would probably be replaced with scaled content abuse as the spam type worth talking about today.
- D3-C237 Day 3 · What are quality updates
Google's slide said Google made more than 4,700 launches to Search in 2023; the speaker rounded this to close to 5,000.
repeatsD3-C149 Day 3 · How Google thinks about QualityGoogle's slide said that in 2023 Google ran 719,326 search quality tests, 124,942 side-by-side experiments and 16,871 live traffic experiments, and made 4,781 launches to Search.
- Stage D3-C256 Day 3 · What are quality updates
Google does not index every URL on the web; because it cannot index everything, it has to rank results better and better to satisfy users' information needs.
repeatsStage D2-C680 Day 2 · Deciding what goes in the index?Google's index is immense but finite, so Google cannot index every URL it finds on a web with a practically infinite number of URLs.
- Stage D3-C275 Day 3 · What are quality updates
Google aims to keep more than 99% of search results free from spam and said it already achieves this, thanks to advances in AI.
repeatsStage D2-C676 Day 2 · Calculating (some) signalsGoogle's testing shows that, thanks to SpamBrain, more than 99% of visits from Search are now spam-free.