Blog - Googles Spam Reporting Tool

I simply had to make a note about this tool before it got lost in my open browser tabs and forgotten.

I came across this link:

https://search.google.com/search-console/report-spam?utm_source=wmx&utm_medium=deprecation-pane&utm_content=spamreportform

You might need to be logged in to use it.

Might be worth noting that I am not a supporter of Google and its really in that light that I am hastily making this blog, and irony filters should be set to high.

Here are the categories.

The page displays spammy content

Pages with irrelevant or useless content that exploit search engine algorithms to appear as relevant results

This appears quite straight forward, but really, who decides that, after all the internet is full of content creators creating content that is explicitly designed to 'rank well', top ten lists, and endless guides and articles that are little more than regurgitations of Wikipedia content or content from other places. I will defer any further vitriol until after I have covered the other points that Google is keen for you to report.

The page engages in spammy behaviour

Pages that engage in abusive behaviour to manipulate search engines' ranking

Is there anything to differentiate this point from the previous point? Is that not Google spamming its own spam reporting page?

The page is deceptive

Pages that do not deliver promised online or real-life services with intent to mislead or defraud the user

This is an interesting point, which could infer illegal content. I don't want to criticise this point too directly, other than observe that in reality Google itself is the deceptive elephant in the room, purporting to offer a search engine, whilst in reality it’s simply a pay to play system in which all the suckers below the horizon are just there to give the illusion of choice, whilst all the links you see have paid to be there.

The page is low quality

Poorly written or designed page that's often created in bulk to attract clicks from users rather than to genuinely inform or entertain

So, in Googles opinion, web sites are there to 'inform' or 'entertain'. Does this mean that sites designed to sell things are excluded? I might be pontificating here, but you have to remember that when you have a global power such as Google abusing trust at such a scale, you have to look at these questions in the context of that abuse.

The page contains paid links

Pages that contain/receive unnatural, artificial, deceptive or manipulative inbound or outbound links

I apologise if at this point your finely tuned irony meters have exploded and maybe caused serious injury in your vicinity. Yes, that’s sites that are created for no other purpose than to rake in money from people that pay for their links to be on the page. Let’s be clear, it’s not hard to demonstrate that sites can receive zero organic traffic from Google but yet readily receive 100 clicks a day upon paying for that traffic. The difference is eyewatering, and clearly demonstrates that Google is nothing more than a very expensive pay to play game in which only the rich stand to gain.

Other

Any other search abuse or exploitative SEO strategy not mentioned above

Let’s not worry too much about the other things that could be reported because when you are dealing with a Stasi-like enterprise, that could be anything.

My reason for posting this as I want to make a note of the link, I actually have some other pressing matters to deal with and so will make this brief.

So, we have a tool in which sites can be reported?

I recall years ago that sites would be penalised if they were gateway sites, ie sites with a pay wall. But now, it appears that most news sites are paywall, but still come up at the top of searches. I recall The Washington Post always being at the top, but whilst being of minimal interest to people in the UK, also being behind a pay wall. In particular, you have the Financial Times, which is ironically what I 'look at', as I can't afford a subscription, but I look at the headlines, and that suffices for me. It has a print circulation of less than 110,000 a month, and falling, and a digital circulation of 16,000. Given a population of 68 million people in the UK, that is 0.02% of the country. You might have thought something like er, Horse Monthly, might have a bigger potential audience.

My point really is that most news sites are terrible, either behind paywalls or full of cookie alerts, subscription alerts, advertising and worse, making them in many cases unreadable. And yet, they are constantly in the Google results, even for things that are totally irrelevant. Why? Because Google has selectively curated who will appear in search engine rankings, and it won't be small sites, and after they run out of obvious results, they default to virtually anything from their list of pals.

For example, I have a site that I am involved with and it has a MFG domain, ie, made for Google, it’s an exact match for a keyword, as is common for people to do. However, you won't find it anywhere for that term at all. Obviously Google as stopped people being able to search for more than 10 results at a time, and has further relegated results to a mere 100-200 or so, meaning that if you want to look at result 1,500,002 for example, because maybe you don't trust Google, you can't. This is shadow banning or visibility filtering. However, to follow Googles guidelines, which maybe I should do a blog on, it appears that what you need to do is create 'great' content. Which, ironically, this site offers. It in fact, offers an incredible user experience, designed for the user experience in the first instance and SEO in the second. It relates to books and had has details of each book with a large system of supporting images, videos and quiz questions for each book, providing significant context to enhance the user expereince. Itis a large site, but when searching for that key term it simply isn't there, but news sites are. The point is that news sites are often really simply churning out content for the sake of getting content, and are not far off qualifying as spammers themselves, especially when the content is exact duplicate content from countless other news sites.

Of course, I have not gone near the listicle sector yet. Listicles, in case you don't know, are lists, devised to spam the search engines. Even at a generous glance, searching for Top Ten Books comes up with results that are far from anything other than click bait to take you into the creators site.

And yet, here we have a tool to report this.

Whilst I am of the opinion that Google is actively filtering out sites it doesn’t like based on a hidden government agenda, even if you look at it in its most generous and unassuming sense, how do you decide what spam content is? Its like cookery and gardening. I concluded a long while back that there is virtually no need for any other cookery or gardening books. They were written decades ago and they all contain the same information. In fact, many of them are classics and go to reference points. So on what grounds to these countless cookery and gardening books churn out content day after day? At what point is that not valid content to entertain and merely spam? What’s the point on creating a site on history when surely Wikipedia is the master of all history? At what point does the content become content created to exploit the search engines with fresh content full of keywords. The endless generation of similar content, dated the latest year, 2025? Best garden tips 2025? When is this search not already spam? Must grow plants for 2025? Plan Your 2025 Garden in 5 Easy Steps?

I could go on.

Simply put, Google is already shadow banning any content that it doesn't like, and I suspect a determining fact is whether or not the content can be monetised. For example if you have an information site that has no monetisation options, such as buy this book or buy this t-shirt then it will get traffic, but by having a form of monetisation, unless you're part of the Google cabal of sycophantic groupies singing from the appropriate hymn sheet, you will get nothing.

Essentially, exposure is power and power is central to what drives the world. Everyone is seeking power, whether they know it or not. Bloggers of yore fed off of comments to what they had written and when Google turned off the pipeline to their site, the blogs died off.

Of course, if you believe there are UK military units sitting about in data centres trolling the internet, it doesn't take much to wonder how much power they would have if they all simultaneously reported any site they fancised, causing Google to then delist the site because they had a lot of spam reports. A bit like the Ofcom complaints section which selectively decides what complaints to uphold. Come to that, like any UK ombudsman service.

Combined with the fact that Google clearly shadow bans sites but does not notify the site owner, this Spam Submission tool strikes me as being very ominous.

I wouldn't like to suggest the tool is abused. How do you abuse an abuser?

Of course the Government won't step in because they are essentially all answering to the same call.

So that’s that. A future of curated spam from Google.

To leave you on a high point, here is a link to how to make the most of your garden in 2025 from You Garden, the incredible non-spammy made for Google about gardening artivle that is totally different to anything written in 1950. Link.

I'm off now to report all the web designers with blog posts for Best 2025 SEO Tips, on the grounds that it's deceptive content designed to get people to buy their SEO services (joke).