Spammy Links – Google included most commonly webspam tactics used in 2017 and measures taken to stop these activities. This report contains information about the most common webspam tactics utilized throughout the year and the extent to which Google has been able to combat the efforts of bad actors.

Additionally, the search engine also provided details of proactive efforts involved to help protect site owners from these webspam tactics. In 2017, Google’s spam team doubled down their effort in removing unnatural links via ranking improvements and scalable manual actions.

Google considers anything that disobeys webmaster guidelines as spam. Reportedly, there are 0.5% spammy sites in search results. In 2017, Hacked sites were mostly used as a spam tactic for manipulating search rankings or spread malware. Google said that around 80% of hacked sites have been removed from search results.

The search engine was able to diminish and punish link spam. It reduces the noise surrounding links as a ranking signal. With this authentic links become more precious and powerful for SEO.

Major Highlights of 2017 Webspam Report

Authentic links get stronger

Increase in website hacking

The year-over-year reduction in link spam

Robust CMS (Content Management System) is important

Google 2017 Webspam Report Stats

On YoY basis, spam link reduced by half

An action was taken on nearly 90,000 user reports of search spam

Sent 45 million messages to registered website owners regarding issues

New safe browsing protections introduced for macOS devices

Enabling predictive phishing protection in Chrome

The search engine performed 250 online events, offline events and online office hours across the globe to audiences totaling over 0.22 million webmasters, digital marketers and website owners

Launched “significant” improvements to protecting users from deceptive Chrome extension installation

For protecting users from deceptive Chrome extension installation the company made significant improvements to its safe browsing protection

Google enabled predictive phishing protection in Chrome

Finding Spam Links by Checking the Link to The Site

Search Console or Webmaster tool has a function to comprehensively extract and check linked links. In short, the link is a link that a third party pasted towards the contents of your site. When picked up mainly by personal blogs and news media, the number of linked links will increase relatively. One can see improvement in high-level display of search result and SEO internal measures by inspecting this linked information and text link.

Identifying & Collecting Spammy Links

Step 1 – Go to Google Search Console

Step 2 – Select ‘Search Traffic’ option and then click on ‘Links to Your Site’

Step 3 – Locate ‘Who Links the Most’ option and then click ‘More’

Step 4 – Now Download ‘latest links’ to see links related to your site

Step 5 – Review the downloaded spreadsheet and screening for any ‘Bad’ links

Step 6 – Identify and make a note of all negative impacting links

How to Get Rid Of Spammy Links

Step 1 – Create a text file containing links you want to disavow and later copy it into a .txt file encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII

Step 2 – Go to the Google’s Disavow Tool page

Step 3 – Select Your Website and Click ‘Disavow Links’

Step 4 – Upload the text file created

Step 5 – Go ahead and submit

Nine Best Backlink Tools for identifying Spammy Links

Ahrefs

Linkody

cognitiveSEO

Kerboo

LinkResearchTools

Majestic SEO

Monitor Backlinks

SEO PowerSuite

Open Site Explorer

Conclusion

By keeping a healthy link profile and regular search engine optimization one can expect higher ranking and growth.