Since Google released rich snippets, spammers have been trying to spam the rich snippets. Over the years, as far back as 2012, Google has been asking you to report these attempts to them. And yes, Google does take action on rich snippet spam.
That being said, things still get through because it isn't always easy to catch.
John Mueller of Google posted one example of a popular structured data error that he sees a lot that does get caught by Google:
Structured data manual action? One error I sometimes see is a list of items (hotels in X, etc) marked up as one. https://t.co/DKaXt41BnV
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) September 6, 2017
Yea, specifically using the wrong markup on the wrong type of page. Sometimes this is done in error and sometimes not.
Former Google spam fighter Murat Yatagan then followed up with his disappointment in how Google handles much of this. He called out Google for not doing enough about this type of spam:
Hi John, I really do not think Webspam team is taking enough manual actions to fight against abused SD use, please check the image attached. pic.twitter.com/fuk7SJceSj
— Murat Yatagan 📈 (@muratyatagan) September 6, 2017
This is a violation of Events markup guidelines, which needs to be penalized. My team (10+ ppl) reported this abuse 15+ times over 2 months pic.twitter.com/JGeJiew6Je
— Murat Yatagan 📈 (@muratyatagan) September 6, 2017
He isn't happy and he use to be a spam fighter at Google, so he knows what is involved internally at Google to deal with these.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
