What Is Google SpamBrain?
Google SpamBrain is an AI-powered algorithm and spam detection system Google uses to identify and neutralize spammy content, links, and malicious, harmful, and deceptive practices on the web.
SpamBrain is a self-learning artificial intelligence (AI) system. This means it continuously learns and adapts to new types of spam, as well as modified versions of existing ones.
Google launched SpamBrain in 2018, but only announced its existence four years later, in 2022. Interestingly, Google hinted at SpamBrain in a 2020 blog post, where it discussed using “machine learning solutions” to combat webspam at scale. However, it did not explicitly mention SpamBrain.
SpamBrain catches spam when the page is being crawled, so detected spam does not even get indexed, let alone displayed to visitors.
Google reported that due to SpamBrain, 99% of visits from its pagine dei risultati di ricerca lead to spam-free experiences. It also announced that SpamBrain had detected five times more spam in 2022 than it did in 2021, and 200 times more spam than it did when it was first released.
Importance of Google SpamBrain
SpamBrain is one of the multiple systems Google uses to maintain the reliability and quality of the results displayed on its search results pages. This assures users of the safety, accuracy, and credibility of the Google results page and reduces their chances of landing on spammy results and webpages.
SpamBrain can identify a wide range of spam. For instance, it can identify simple spam techniques, such as cloaking e keyword stuffing, as well as more complex ones piace paid links.
In the case of paid links, it can identify sites that buy links as well as those that sell. Once it identifies manipulative behavior, it reduces the visibility of the affected pages in search results.
SpamBrain is particularly important in an era where malicious actors are constantly refining their spam techniques to deceive Google’s systems.
Instead of responding to these spammy techniques with hard-coded systems that can be outsmarted, SpamBrain uses advanced self-learning machine learning techniques to identify and counter these manipulative practices.
Is SpamBrain a Ranking Factor?
SpamBrain is not a ranking factor. However, it can influence rankings due to its ability to neutralize any benefit a site would have gotten from using a spam technique.
Once SpamBrain detects a spammy link, it neutralizes it to ensure it cannot pass link equity e PageRank to the affected sites. This causes the sites to lose the benefits it may have accrued from such links.
If those links previously caused the site to gain rankings, then the blogger will notice a drop in their rankings once SpamBrain neutralizes them.
Overall, while SpamBrain does not assign or affect rankings to sites like most ranking factors do, its impact on what gets ranked makes it a powerful enforcement system that can prevent specific pages from ranking on search results pages.
How SpamBrain Impacts Google Spam and Link Spam Updates
Google periodically releases two types of spam-related updates to demote the rankings of sites involved in practices that violate its Search Essentials guidelines. The first are called spam updates, while the other are link spam updates.
- Spam updates impact content spam techniques like keyword stuffing and scaled content abuse
- Link spam updates impact link spam-related techniques like excessive link exchanges and paid links
Multiple systems, including SpamBrain, are typically involved in the spam and link spam updates. SpamBrain also operates in real-time, meaning it can continuously detect and neutralize spammy content and links, thereby impacting their visibility in search results.
A site can improve its content to recover its rankings after a spam update. However, a site may not recover its rankings after a link spam update since the link equity and PageRank originating from links have been neutralized.