Search Central LiveDeep Dive Europe 2026

Knowledge base v2.13.0 · Community edition · data through 2 October 2026

Topic · Serving and ranking

Spam policies and manual actions

Google defines spam as content designed to deceive users or manipulate search results. Its Day 3 slide named cloaking, doorways, scraped content, link spam and hacked content, but the speaker said scaled content abuse would replace link spam as the type worth talking about today (said at the event). Recent policy changes covered back button hijacking (announced 13 April 2026, enforced from 15 June 2026), scaled content abuse and spam aimed at manipulating AI responses, which falls under the same policies. Google reads spam reports to decide what to tackle next and may take manual action on them; Google estimated that removing a manual action after a reconsideration request takes 1-2 weeks on average, and its help says reviews take several days or weeks. Scaled content abuse, which Google's policies define as generating many pages mainly to manipulate rankings however they are created, came up on every day: separate pages for fan-out query variations on Day 1, automatically translated scraped content on Day 2 and mass-produced AI slop on Day 3. Google said some sites never get a manual action removed because their owners do not actually clean up. On Day 2 the non-Latin-script talk recalled that Google treats buying links for ranking as spam, yet observed that bought backlinks and paid editorial content still visibly influence competitive Persian, Turkish and Arabic results (an observation, stressed as not a recommendation), and on Day 1 a community speaker warned that the industry is overusing listicles for AI visibility the way it once overused links.

Based on D3-C274, D3-C277, D3-C284, D3-C207, D3-C209, D3-C212, D3-C214, D3-C215, D3-C659, D3-C674, D2-C611, D1-C129, D3-C695, D3-C660, D2-C977, D2-C967, D1-C293

33 claims · raised in 5 sessions · said or shown on Day 1 and Day 2 and Day 3

Open in Reef mapOpen in Graph

Things in this topic 6

Counts are claims that name the thing. All things

What to do

  • Test that the back button returns users to where they came from, and audit libraries and ad scripts that use the History API.
  • Audit mass-produced pages, including AI-generated ones, before older link patterns.
  • Serve Googlebot the same content as users, avoid near-identical location or keyword pages, add value to reused content, and patch and monitor the CMS against injected pages and links.

Day 1: Crawling 1

Said on stage 1

Day 2: Indexing 2

Said on stage 2

StageNot in docsD2-C967

The presenter of the non-Latin-script talk said that in competitive Persian, Turkish and Arabic searches, bought backlinks and paid editorial content still visibly influence rankings and are widespread (an observation; no data was shown); the presenter stressed this described the situation and was not a recommendation.

Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript

Day 3: Serving: Ranking, Search Console, and Performance 30

Shown on screen 7

SlideConsistent 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 GoogleIn Day 3, 12:00 · What are quality updatesEvidence slide photo

SlideConsistent 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 GoogleIn Day 3, 12:00 · What are quality updatesEvidence slide photo

Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-04

Said on stage 13

StageConfirmed by docsD3-C201

Google's quality talk said Google had released four spam updates in 2026 by the time of the talk on 2 October, with one still rolling out.

Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript

Things
StageConfirmed by docsD3-C207

Google's quality talk listed recent updates to Google's spam policies: back button hijacking, scaled content abuse and manipulating AI responses.

Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript

Things

Used byrequirements DEV-SPM-01, DEV-SPM-02

  • Extended by D3-C284 Day 3: Reviewing the spam slide, the speaker said link spam would probably be replaced with scaled content abuse as…
StageConsistent with docsD3-C208

Google's quality talk said back button hijacking was added after many user complaints about pressing the back button and landing on an auto-generated page, or staying on the same site after pressing it twice.

Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript

Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-01glossary term Back button hijacking

StageConfirmed by docsD3-C212

Google's quality talk said Google clarified that traditional spam techniques aimed at manipulating AI responses also violate its spam policies, and that Google can take action against them.

Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript

  • Extends D1-C129 Day 1: Google's guide says creating separate content for every variation of how people might search, including…
StageNot in docsD3-C283

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 GoogleIn Day 3, 12:00 · What are quality updatesEvidence slide photo, transcript

StageNot in docsD3-C284

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 GoogleIn Day 3, 12:00 · What are quality updatesEvidence slide photo, transcript

Things

Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-02

  • Extends D3-C207 Day 3: Google's quality talk listed recent updates to Google's spam policies: back button hijacking, scaled content…
  • Extended by D3-C694 Day 3: Scaled content abuse is becoming a problem again: in the early 2000s pages were churned out with Perl or PHP…

What Google's documentation says 5

DocsSourceD3-C202

Google's Search Status Dashboard says the September 2026 spam update began on 24 September 2026, applies globally to all languages and may take up to two weeks to roll out.

Publisher Google Search Status Dashboard (Ranking incident history), Google Search Status Dashboard (September 2026 spam update)Annotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality

Things
DocsSourceD3-C209

Google announced on 13 April 2026 that back button hijacking is an explicit violation of its malicious practices spam policy, with enforcement from 15 June 2026; pages that do it may get manual spam actions or automated demotions.

Publisher Search Central blog (13 April 2026), Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality

Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-01glossary term Back button hijacking

DocsSourceD3-C210

Google's back button hijacking announcement says some instances may come from a site's included libraries or advertising platform, and asks site owners to remove or disable any code, imports or configurations responsible.

Publisher Search Central blog (13 April 2026)Annotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality

Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-01

DocsSourceD3-C215

Since April 2026 Google's spam report page says Google may use a report to take manual action, and that the submission text is sent to the site owner, so reports containing personally identifying information are not processed.

Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality

Analysis by the author 5

AnalysisD3-C211

For development teams: test that the browser back button returns users from your pages to where they came from, including search results; audit scripts that call the History API, insert interstitial or 'recommended' pages, or come from ad and engagement vendors.

Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality

Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-01

Across days and sessions 3

  1. Stage D3-C212 Day 3 · How Google thinks about Quality

    Google's quality talk said Google clarified that traditional spam techniques aimed at manipulating AI responses also violate its spam policies, and that Google can take action against them.

    extends
    Docs D1-C129 Day 1 · How Search works and where's AI?

    Google's guide says creating separate content for every variation of how people might search, including fan-out queries, primarily to manipulate rankings or AI responses violates its scaled content abuse policy. It adds that its AI systems can understand a page's relevance even without an exact match to the query.

  2. 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.

    extends
    Stage D3-C207 Day 3 · How Google thinks about Quality

    Google's quality talk listed recent updates to Google's spam policies: back button hijacking, scaled content abuse and manipulating AI responses.

  3. 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.

    extends
    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.

Built on these claims 4

Developer requirements 4

Sources 11