Google: 65% Of User Generated Spam Reports Are Acted On

I covered this last night at Search Engine Land, but I am asked this often. If you submit a spam report to Google, does Google even listen to it.

Well, yesterday at SMX West, Google's Juan Felipe Rincon said Google does look at those reports. In fact, he pulled data to share with the audience. He said Google gets about 7 million bits of spam reports a month (or something like that, if I can remember correctly), of that 35,000 of them are user generated or submitted and of those Google takes action on 65% of those user generated spam reports.

So about 35,000 user generated spam reports are filled out monthly and Google takes action on 65% of them. Why not all of them? Well, most are not spam he said. 80% of them are spam but only 65% require manual action, 20% are not spam and I guess the are not impacting the search results due to algorithms or already have manual actions.

Here are some tweets from the session:

35k spam reports per month. Take action on 65% of them. 80% of those are considered spam. @jfrprr #smx

— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) March 2, 2016

35,000 User Spam Reports are received by Google per month.

Approximately 65% of them result in action.@jfrprr #SMX

— Sha Menz (@ShahMenz) March 2, 2016

Google Takes Action On 65% Of User Generated Spam Reports https://t.co/HeQv3pM0yz via @sengineland

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) March 2, 2016

Other tidbits include that Google would prioritize some user generated spam reports if those users have proven to show that they submit solid and quality spam reports. Google acts quicker on some spam reports if it will impact a lot of Google searchers. Google does look at all the factors before assigning manual actions, including the page, the site, the sites owned by the webmaster and the industry it is in.

Here are some excellent tweets from the session:

Google prioritizes spam report from some users who have proven to be good at reporting spam #smx

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) March 2, 2016

35k spam reports per month. Take action on 65% of them. 80% of those are considered spam. @jfrprr #smx

— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) March 2, 2016

When Google looks at link practices, depends whether looked at site level, industry level, etc. @jfrprr #smx

— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) March 2, 2016

Manual Actions are generated from a variety of different monitoring systems - some include humans.#SMX

— Sha Menz (@ShahMenz) March 2, 2016

Forum discussion at Twitter.