Google Spam Update: This episode is about prevention and SEO worst case scenario readiness.

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0:41Here's today's host of the Voices of Search podcast, Tyson Stockton. My name is Tyson, and joining me today is Kasper Zeminski, Senior Director at Search Brothers. Kasper, welcome back to the podcast.

0:55Kaspar Szymanski: Tyson, it's fantastic to be here. I did not expect to be on the show so soon again. Thank you for having me. And I'm back in Germany, so we're both here. Wie geht's? Sehr gut. Vielen Dank. Wie geht's dir? Yeah. I mean, it's good. So I feel like you have a unique experience and background where you're obviously highly qualified to shed a bit more light into what went on with this kind of a peek behind the curtains, if you will, on what really is happening. So maybe to just set the table, what can you kind of share with the listeners as far as what they should know about the August spam lifting?

1:38Kaspar Szymanski: I think there is... Thank you for that. I very much appreciate, of course, the vote of confidence. That being said, I think there's a good few other people out there that keep tabs on what's going on. Two articles actually very much stood out in recent weeks. One by Danny Goodwin on Search Engine Land on the spam update specifically. And the other one was on Search Engine Journal by Roger Monti. Again, both great articles, very much worth reading time. Both primarily put the focus on AI, which is a big part of the conversation. However, from our perspective, we have a little bit more of an insight because in very many cases we are in fact the go-to place when things go south, when there's penalties in place where websites lose visibility abruptly.

2:28Kaspar Szymanski: And it's fair to say that there are two things going on. There is the spam update that you just talked about indeed and that is a big one and it does impact AI sites that have been utilizing AI for content creation to a large extent, not exclusively, but at the same time there is a huge push that's been happening over the last six weeks and those are manual spam actions. So this is targeted action very frequently. these are really, this is Google applying the scalpel rather than the nuclear option, to go after violations that went unnoticed for a very long time. And there are actually a good few websites out there affected by both.

3:14Kaspar Szymanski: Now, this is, of course, a rather grim scenario. The good news is, or, you know, the positive news is all of the above is fixable. And this is the first thing that I actually always tell when people reach out with issues around either, you know, manual spam actions or with issues that pertain to a spam update or both. The first thing that I'm always saying, keep in mind, this is all fixable. It may take a little bit of legwork, but it can be done. Well, and that's an interesting point too, like the call out of like, hey, there's two different things in motion right now. There's the more broader general spam update, which is not targeted at any one specific website.

4:02And then, like you said, a wave of manual penalties that kind of gone through at the same time. Maybe for anyone that's not as familiar of like, well, what's the difference? How do I know if I was a manual update? What can you kind of also share of what that process looks like when a manual penalty is put in place?

4:21Kaspar Szymanski: I love the question because this is frequently not well understood or, you know, most businesses out there, they have no need to understand it up until they're affected by one or the other. So there is manual spam action, which is a targeted action taken specifically manually on Google's site for websites that kind of slipped through the cracks, you know, that had a little bit of an advantage unfairly from Google's perspective. So this can be because they've been building links, past Patreon for a considerable period of time and got away with it. Or maybe they've been doing cloaking and showing just a little bit less ads to Googlebot as in comparison to users.

5:01Kaspar Szymanski: Or maybe it is because their content is not up to par. Now, in these cases, Google will try to be very granular about it. So rather than using the hatchet, they will use the scalpel and apply it to only a section of the website if possible and notify the website operator via Google Search Console. Google Search Console, we're going to mention this time and again, very, very important for anybody doing online business out there. A couple of downsides with manual spam action. Particularly, it takes very long for those manual spam actions to actually go away to expire or by themselves. So sitting it out is not an option.

5:40Kaspar Szymanski: And I want to touch on that topic a little bit because this seems to be the idea in a lot of cases. You know, just waiting, it's going to go away. It's a little bit like an aching tooth, not a viable option. They can be fixed, but there is a very structured process on Google Send whereby initially the issue has to be addressed. The reason for the website to be penalized in the first place, it has to be removed from the site. And then there is a reconsideration request process. So literally the user, or rather the operator has to tell Google, you know, this is the steps we've taken. Please revoke the penalty.

6:24Kaspar Szymanski: We want to get back into Google's good grace. And somewhere between a couple of hours or a couple of weeks later, there was no confirmed turnaround time. they would be receiving an answer that either says yes or no. Now, with algorithms, it's slightly different because there is no notification process in place. This is about the input that goes into Google algorithms. So the signals that are being picked up by Google crawlers and Google algorithms, those are being processed, and the result thereof is, of course, the rankings of individual websites for any given competitive query. Now, because these signals change and because the algorithms change, fluctuations are normal.

7:03Kaspar Szymanski: And whenever there is a spam update, there is a heavier emphasis on methods that Google doesn't approve of. And sites that are, it's called borderline, tend to lose out in the course of those updates. Why does Google roll out, so to say, or push on both fronts at the same time? I think it makes perfectly sense. A, it just shows that they are really committed to pruning the index from websites that have not been absolutely playing by the rules. And it just makes sense to do both at the same time just to increase the impact of those sites. I do believe it's for a lot of retailers, and a lot of retailers are currently affected by the situation.

7:45Kaspar Szymanski: It's better this is happening right now around summertime rather than if Google were to wait until Q4, which is a very important sales season for a lot of business out there. True. Well, and I want to double back on that too. So is it, it's not, it doesn't sound like then it's a coincidence that the manual update kind of wave has come at a similar time as like this broader algorithm. So like, I'm guessing as they're going through and making those adjustments for the algorithm update, some of these players are surfacing out, which is then kind of the great, we're using the hatchet over here, but while we're at it, let's use the scalpel, as you said, on these like high, I don't know, violators, so to speak.

8:32Kaspar Szymanski: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I do not believe that's a coincidence at all. It would have made sense to me. And I think it's a blessing in disguise, to be honest, big parts of the industry, Of course, it isn't great to receive those notifications or to have somebody tell you on the phone while you're on vacation, you know, our site's been dropping Monday morning. This isn't great. Of course, time, you know, could be better, but it could be much worse because any of the remediation steps that are necessary, be that either it was required to a manual spam action or stuff that needs to be changed to the website in order to get into Google's good craze on the algorithmic side.

9:14Kaspar Szymanski: It takes time. Any of this happening, say, mid-November, that's going to impact your sales in Q4. You don't want this to be happening end of the year for a lot of businesses. So while the timing could be, of course, better, I think it could be also much worse. True. And what can you share with the focus of this spam update? Obviously, there's a lot of buzz circling around AI-generated content. And it's been a common debated piece of the industry of, does Google like it? Do they not like it? Is it the quality of it? Is it the usefulness of it? But what can you share with the listeners as far as this specific update and kind of where the focus has been?

9:57Kaspar Szymanski: This is a very, very important point because matter of factly speaking, I know that Google is indifferent with regard to how content is generated. Content has been generated in an automated way for as long as Google existed. And there is nothing inherently wrong in generating large volume of templated landing pages as long as they add value. And this is the important thing. So you could have had, let's say, not so much five, but maybe 10 years ago, you could have operated a website that meshes up content from different sources. So you're not the original source, but meshing it up actually generates added value that isn't available readily elsewhere.

10:45Kaspar Szymanski: So that would be absolutely kosher. That would be legit. There would be no issues associated with content quality whatsoever. However, AI gave a tool at hand to a lot of people that otherwise may have resorted to editorial processes. And the actual problem and the reason why so many sites are affected that have been utilizing AI is quality control. Either the absence of quality control or inadequate quality control. No human oversight. Let's face it. And that, you know, this is a safe space, I suppose. AI-generated content that hasn't been manually edited is detectable at a 10 miles range. I think we can see it.

11:34Kaspar Szymanski: Now, us and our listeners are probably fairly not representative for the general audience because we work with this kind of stuff on a daily basis. But the users out there are getting more and more adept in detecting AI content. And there is a group of people, a growing group of people who doesn't like it. You might come across a lot of videos nowadays on YouTube that say specifically no AI used in the process. Because people want to have editorial reviews and the editorial content done by humans. There is nothing inherently wrong with using AI. It can be used if it's being used wisely. But if AI generation takes over the editorial process completely, the risk of being penalized or of being affected by Google algorithms in a negative way, it grows significantly.

12:29Kaspar Szymanski: This is the reason why so many are affected. I do not believe that those recent moves on Google's part are targeting AI specifically. I think they are targeting what Google deems low-quality content instead. that interesting and to me it kind of it highlights too that especially with how the technology's progressed the like one of the more important or like challenge areas that like i've been trying to push people in is like it's more in that like qa vetting it's like it's gotten quite easy from a production standpoint whether you're using it for generating briefs outlines first drafts maybe entire drafts that then is doing but it's like what is the scalability or what is your approach on that qa vetting and like how can you balance that element seems to be at least for me the more interesting challenging part of this process um because again it's like it has gotten so easy but there's more of that like vetting and like validation of yes this is helpful or this is useful.

13:36As far as like how someone would go about that, like as humans, we're all going to have our own bias. So like, would you have any input or advice on like, how should someone be validating that? Yes, this content is useful or valid kind of for their user base.

13:56Kaspar Szymanski: And this is, this is front and center of the current situation with AI solutions, both AI solutions as tools for us as an industry, and we're on the front front of utilizing those, I suppose, as well as AI solutions as potential alternatives for users interested in finding answers to their questions, to their queries. Validation, which is, shall we call that behind, problematic with most AI services currently available very frequently and our listeners or audience probably can relate to that you type in a query and you get two answers you know one says A the other one says B they are completely you know they are completely opposite of each other and you're kind of left with a result that says well pick and choose whatever you like better well that's not good enough, I suppose.

14:57Kaspar Szymanski: So content quality, validation, accuracy of the information provided is really an area that needs to be much further developed before AI solutions can be applied much more broadly without oversight. Leading to your actual questions, how to, you know, how to make it happen, how to utilize it. It really depends on business, right? If we happen to be talking about the publisher that is in the news business, time is of essence, of course. So there's all these things that really matter as in, you know, managing your crawl budget and your server responses and all these technical signals that will really make a huge difference because if you have your news first available and crawlable, but your server starts to slow, it doesn't, it's not going to matter whatsoever.

15:47Kaspar Szymanski: But then there's of course the editorial process. And I've been talking to publishers who chose to massively reduce their workforce, their human workforce, to replace it in an approach to be, in an attempt to be innovative. It was being replaced by AI solutions very uncritically. Critical thinking is something that AI solutions are not capable of. They are not capable of thinking to begin with. But critical approach is not something that can, where humans can be replaced. So we need that human component. But again, not every business needs to publish massive amounts of information on a daily basis.

16:28Kaspar Szymanski: If it's a retail business, it may be actually much more important to have a website that is properly marked up, where the items that are on sale are not just available, but where we provide actual user reviews, no real user reviews, rather than stuff that may have been generated previously, and also critical ones, and that will make a difference. So it's really important when AI solutions are applied to look at them and see how they can be kind of, you know, kept on a short leash, if you want, in the context of the business needs of the particular web platform that we're talking about. There is, I'm afraid, no silver bullet.

17:08Kaspar Szymanski: Short of saying human oversight is critically important. without human oversight, applying AI solutions, that is really rather dangerous. Which I feel like the accuracy one makes a lot of sense. And, you know, I can see that being something obviously that can be programmatic and checked from like Google's side. How much of these spam updates do you feel like are driven from that like programmatic evaluation versus like i know i guess it's been a little while since i've heard it been talked about but it's like the user rating guidelines and stuff like how much of it is like a human evaluation versus like this programmatic or is it just hey they're taking one as a signal to then build out programmatic evaluations like how how is google really viewing this or looking at this in their own eyes.

18:07Kaspar Szymanski: God, I'd love to be one of those meetings again. Unfortunately, I'm not privy to that kind of information anymore. I can talk from my past experience. Back then, this was, and I'm pretty much confident that it hasn't changed much. It goes hand in hand, right? Ideally, there wouldn't be any manual spam actions if all systems worked as intended without too many false positives. But let's face it, manual spam actions have been a reality of the industry for, what is it now, 20 years? 20 years plus, actually. I think we're approaching the 23rd year. So Google can't do without. Human ingenuity on the, let's call it, spammer side is incredible.

18:51Kaspar Szymanski: I have the highest respect for people that are hell-bent on finding workarounds. it's incredible what they're able to come up with and there will always be innovation that is propelled by this competition spammers against the Google search quality team now the search quality team in itself is really a lot rather large and a team that is you know that is dispersed globally including people that are native speakers across languages because we have to keep in mind model or primary audience for primary listeners, probably US-based or native English speakers, there are large markets and they differ.

19:38Kaspar Szymanski: Technical signals might be similar, but language markets differ considerably. And there will be a couple of really big ones, like the German, the Spanish, the French. So there are people in place on Google sites who speak those languages. They are native speakers. They do work as teams. It's not one prior to everything over the other. And of course, you wouldn't want to prioritize manual actions as a global approach, as a global smack it all kind of weapon to begin with. So there must be an emphasis on solutions that are scalable, while at the same time, it will probably never be possible to entirely abandoned taking targeted actions where sites are particularly creative or where sites had been particularly creative a long time ago and it went unnoticed.

20:32Kaspar Szymanski: Spam detection is both an art and a science and if it were that simple you know if AI could do it or if algorithms could do it properly there wouldn't be a large web spam team out there. So I'm confident this will continue. I'm confident these teams will continue working together. And actually, I very much enjoy looking a little bit from the outside of the competition that's going on. Because every time you see one side kind of coming up with something really creative and new, you would have that reaction and maybe a new rollout and maybe a new push. It's a tug of force. It goes back and forth.

21:11Kaspar Szymanski: It is what makes our industry really rather exciting to a certain extent. But of course, for our listeners, the vast majority of e-commerce entrepreneurs out there, this is mere background noise, right? What you care for is for your own platform to rank well and to be stable, to be secure. And there is ways to securing that, of course, as well. well i find it interesting too like that blend on google side of like human and you know machine um and i feel like personally too like there's probably some elements of that that you can take into also like your own publishing strategy or like content generation where it's like you have that high human touch but it's not obviously going to be a hundred percent because of the limitations that you have there but it's like that's kind of like your early kind of like indicator and probe which then you're looking for ways to be like okay with this how could we detect that then at scale and so i feel like they're especially if you're a larger enterprise and you're operating in this high volume, there's going to be like a need for that, like super granular, high critical dissection of what you're putting out there.

22:35But then also this, like, how do you can, how do you scale that across with more programmatic efforts? And so I think it's interesting just to take, well, what's Google's approach at identifying and kind of scaling through this? And then how can we maybe like take some of those same philosophies and apply it to a different scale for your own website? And sure, if you're a small website, it doesn't matter, just human QA kind of everything. But it's like there's definitely levels and scales that that, you know, becomes a limitation for you. So I think there's an interesting kind of play of like taking a similar mindset or philosophy into our own like creation efforts.

23:19So I don't know your thoughts on kind of like that type of blended approach from not just Google side, but from like the producer side.

23:28Kaspar Szymanski: To be quite frank with you, I think this may be a rabbit's hole because for anybody operating a business out there, SEO should be maybe one of the priorities, an important thing that is being factored into the budgeting and, you know, into the policy compliance efforts. And it really shouldn't be the thing that you spend your whole day on if you happen to be a CEO, right? I mean, if you're chief marketing officer, maybe a little bit. If you're the chief technical officer, certainly to some extent. But it shouldn't be absorbing, you know, your waking hours. What should be your focus instead is providing a more compelling service or a better product to your target audience.

24:17Kaspar Szymanski: Because that's what your business is really about. We need to remind ourselves, and this is really, really important for our audience as well, that you can have the best SEO out there. And it will not make a difference if you don't have a product or a service that really stands out. The SEO is a prop. It helps. It makes a great product sales go up. It does not fix a business that is lacking something that people actually crave. So SEO really is a crutch, you know, for lack of a better word. But it is not something that really propels businesses. It really just helps them to sell more of a good thing they already have.

25:04Kaspar Szymanski: And for that reason, I think a large chunk of, you know, of decision makers out there, with maybe the exception of the in-house SEO manager, should really not be spending their time reading my articles. I'm very happy if they do, but I don't think it's the best, you know, the best way for them to allocate their limited time during the day. but rather make sure that there is processes in place that ensure periodic checks, right? So, and I like to refer to it like, you know, like a periodic check when you bring your vehicle to the garage just to check the fluids and brakes and whatnot. You want to make sure that, you know, you can go back and forth to school, you can go on vacation, you don't want to get stuck in the middle of the highway.

25:55Kaspar Szymanski: So you do that, right? Because this is a vehicle. There's moving parts. It can break. And the website is very, very similar. At some point, it may have been verified. They may have been audited with technical and policy compliance, and everything was in the green. Fantastic. But this is a living organism. And Google policies change, of course, as well, and technologies age. But a website typically is being changed on regular intervals and some websites change considerably on a daily basis. And we do want to even factor into, you know, mergers and acquisitions and domain migrations or CMS migrations because these kind of steps, while necessary and useful, tend to change signals at the same time also quite considerably.

26:40Kaspar Szymanski: So make sure to have a technical audit and a core policy compliance audit on a regular basis. be absolutely certain that your business model isn't fundamentally at odds with Google. Or if it is, because let's face it, there are businesses out there where the business model is fundamentally against Google Web or in violation with Google Webmaster Guidelines, Google Search Essentials nowadays. And if that's the case, you know, that's your right to conduct your business as you please, as long as it's legal. However, be aware of the risk that is associated and make sure that there are contingency plans.

27:19Kaspar Szymanski: And I always keep saying, I think this is important. Maybe the main message I would really get across, all of these situations are fixable. At times, I'm having these conversations and the answer is, well, that's great, but we don't have the money. And my thought to that is, well, how much money are you currently losing because of the loss in visibility? And let's say for a moment that's, say,$10 ,000, right? All right. How much longer can you actually tolerate that loss? Are you happy with that to continue for a quarter, half a year, a year? Doesn't that amount that is lost offset the investment that is necessary in order to remediate the problem?

28:06Kaspar Szymanski: And I'm not even talking about the light at the end of the tunnel because it can be a stepping stone to new heights. We can talk about that in a moment. But it typically is, if you actually make that calculation, and typically the conversation ends up at some point where we can all agree that somewhere between one to three months is probably most more costly to wait with a lingering penalty rather than conducting an SEO audit and a remediation effort. Now, all of which is, of course, much more expensive than prevention. Prevention is much, much cheaper. It can be planned in advance at a time that is convenient, preferably not in anticipation of the quarter that is really important to you as a business.

28:56Kaspar Szymanski: You can plan your resources. You don't have a, you know, code red situation where essentially you are unable to introduce any changes to your website because whatever change would be applied, it cannot be measured under a penalty. So prevention is much, much better. Now for those, you know, decision makers and business partners who seem to be unconvinced, I would like to point out one point which is really, really rather important but rarely understood. A lot of organizations are hesitant to introduce changes that seem to some decisions makers radical, unnecessary, costly. At a point in time when there is a manual spam action or where the website is really dropping invisibility because of a spam update, frequently that consideration is entirely dropped.

29:52Kaspar Szymanski: But essentially, the conversation goes around the lines of, do whatever changes are necessary. We don't care anymore. Do as you please. Very often, that leads to uncluttering the website, making it much more agile, much more faster, making sure that the website is actually up to par. So things that used to work kind of fine would be now really, really fast. And that translates to rather simple improvements around co-web vitals. but first content of full paint is a really important factor. So how about moving the needles from somewhere around 10 seconds to something under one second? That would make a big difference.

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32:09Kaspar Szymanski: Really do pay out subsequently. Now, once Google notices these, and these websites often do not just regain visibility that was previously enjoyed, but often go above and beyond. It can be a blessing in disguise, but for anybody out there listening, I always say prevention is still much preferable to using a penalty or a critical situation as a stepping stone instead. Absolutely. And like coming back to like this specific like spam update, like if someone like maybe let's like shelf the manual penalty because obviously more drastic, you have that communication window with GSC. But like if someone right now has had a negative impact from this last spam update what would you say like like how would they move forward in that like assuming starting on the investigation like maybe some people are just like yeah i knew it was coming but i assume there's probably a fair amount of like website owners or seos out there that are maybe like unsure of like was i impacted was i not impacted like what are kind of some of those next steps?

33:20Kaspar Szymanski: The first one, obviously, is remain calm. It is difficult and totally understandable if sales are dropping. But remain calm. The agitation that is brought to the discussion, even if manifested in any kind of conversation with Google representative, it's not going to lead anywhere. So calm demeanor really helps. The first initial step is indeed checking Google Search Console So for any manual spam action notification, assuming there is none, we can be fairly certain that this is a situation that connects with a Google spam update. Now, the next thing that must happen really is a thorough, in-depth technical audit.

34:05Kaspar Szymanski: Ideally, that would include server logs. However, 9 out of 10 of our listeners probably are not quite yet saving and preserving their server logs. Or they're saving their server logs. but you know purging them after 30 days which kind of makes the exercise moot because after 30 days you don't have the critical mask like it so anybody out there willing to to actually do that be safe and preserve your server logs for eternity it's cheap you'll be happy it's kind of like an insurance policy right you'll be happy to have them if you ever need them if you don't ever need them well you're lucky but most people you know most people prefer to have them um if you can factory in server logs is actually quite beautiful because it also allows to check the correlation between increased crawler activity and where it actually went to and the bits and pieces of websites that dropped subsequently and within days really and there there is very frequently that correlation so it helps to identify the areas that google might frown upon it will of course be absolutely necessary to crawl the website because you need to understand what your website really is about, not what you believe it is about, not what you think your landing pages are, what they really are.

35:21Kaspar Szymanski: And you know, is there an infinite space situation? Are there crawler traps? Do we actually have 500 million landing pages that are lean content landing pages that we're unaware of, which are holding the website back? So this all needs to be verified. So the website could be crawled. And in case of very large websites, we're talking literally 500 million landing pages and plus, you will probably initially crawl just a representative sample, all of which has to be happening while maintaining operations. So it cannot go too fast. You cannot hammer the server with 50 requests per second because that's going to go nowhere.

35:57Kaspar Szymanski: So it will, of course, take time. The backlink situation needs to be verified and not merely looking at third-party service provider or Google Search Console because those samples, these are fractions, these are representative, but they are not the absolute or even the critical volume, all of which has to be factored in. That's what a technical, holistic and compliance audit is about. Very, very often, the conversation at that point would turn towards, well, when you find something, no matter what it is, tell us right away. And my answer is that's absolutely not. Because you can find a signal that is really rather problematic, but you need to understand first how those signals interact with each other.

36:42Kaspar Szymanski: Signals, technical content and off-page signals do affect each other. So finding one that may be an issue isn't really quite a smoking gun. You need to dig deeper to understand how the system is being perceived by Google and Bing, as a matter of fact, speaking. I'm saying, yeah, go ahead, go ahead. Sorry to jump in. But I want to just go back on one piece, too, because it's like right there with you on the server logs. Like maybe for the listeners, too, that have less experience in looking into server logs. Like, is there a typical behavior that a website will experience when they're negatively impacted by one of these algorithm updates?

37:29It's like, will you see an increased activity kind of going into the update or post? Like any patterns that you could kind of like characterize that maybe people should keep an eye out for?

37:43Kaspar Szymanski: Yes, but if I go into detail about that now, people are going to freak out, start saving and preserving their server logs and verifying them on a daily basis, having sleepless nights. I'm still going to do it, but please, please do not check your server logs on a daily basis. Server logs are supposed to be analyzed on scale, covering a long period of time, not to be fretted over before going for dinner, because that leads no one. So to answer to your question is yes, increased activity. That's what typically leads. And there can be absolutely benign reasons for an increased activity. And maybe your server is just faster.

38:27Kaspar Szymanski: Maybe whatever you're offering is just much more in demand. So Google may have increased the crawl budget allocation. So not every increase in bot activity on your server translates to a negative outcome. But there is in many, many cases, probably 9 out of 10, there's a correlation between increased server activity that was just before the drop. And it would be typically around those bits and pieces of the website that are the culprits of the downfall. Now, again, trying to monitor these is probably something that leads nowhere. because, you know, there can be very, very valid reasons for the server activity to be increased and just waiting for the hammer to come down is certainly not healthy and not something that is productive.

39:26Kaspar Szymanski: So there's a reason why server logs need to be saved and retained so that it can be actually verified in hindsight in order to expedite the remediation process. If server logs are at hand, it's easier to pinpoint the reason why the site went down. Absolutely. And I think like that piece too, because a lot of times, you know, I've had conversations with SEO where it's like, Hey, I think this happened. They have like some evidence to it, but it's like, they're still kind of, you know, a little uncertain. And so it's like, I love calling out here that it's like every time there's an increase in requests coming from Googlebot does not mean necessarily that it is just this.

40:10But if you already have that suspicion, you're seeing that shift as far as performance goes, this is a super helpful kind of element that you can look at to then help validate and build your case of truly understanding what is going on with the site.

40:26Kaspar Szymanski: It's a first step in an investigation. That's what we're talking about. That's an investigation. All right. So we've hit on kind of the investigation side from it. I think it's worth, though, too, and you brought it up a few times that it's like preventative is typically the safest, cheapest and smartest approach in this area. So maybe like what pointers or advice can you give for someone that's more of like, hey, I wasn't impacted by this, but you got my attention. I want to make sure I'm never impacted by this. What should they be doing? Other than prevention, I think not putting all your eggs in the same basket is really the way to go about it.

41:11Kaspar Szymanski: And a little bit like an investment strategy. um relying on the traffic that is forthcoming um from either google or bing alone is probably dangerous to begin with right now those are two search engines and the market share distribution i checked earlier today just in preparation for a conversation isn't changing much it's changing a little bit in google's favor but it's it's very much lopsided i always keep saying it's good to embrace and enjoy that typically around 10 % of the traffic that is forthcoming from Bing. Simply put, that's the traffic that may be contributing towards generating revenue that keeps the lights on when cash flow becomes a real issue because Google slapped a manual spam action or Google traffic isn't forthcoming because of a technical issue, you name it.

42:03Kaspar Szymanski: So have alternatives. Growing a brand, however, is much more preferred. And an awful lot of times I'm being told building a brand takes time. Yes, it does. It's expensive. It's costly. It's a lot of legwork. Yes, all of the above. Absolutely. But growing a brand, building a brand that is recognizable is really a godsend. It makes a business much more independent from that organic traffic that may or may not be for coming. Direct type in traffic is something nobody can take away from you. So having that fallback option to actually have sales in place and continuously generating sales and revenue while trying to attempt to get back into Google's good grace is a far preferred scenario as in saying 100 % or nearly 100 % of my traffic that originates from Google, we're entirely dependent on that source.

43:06Kaspar Szymanski: Without that source, our business essentially doesn't exist. It's going to fold. That's simply about managing risks to a business. So I think both Bing as well as brand, building brand management, and it can be really simple things right like having a real logo not just something that that was created on fiverr for literally a couple of bucks like having a real designer build something that stands out that that makes a difference um that really makes a huge difference being part of the community and not just being part of the reddit community and that's all good and well but knowing your um your clients, your target audience, engaging with them if that's possible.

43:58Kaspar Szymanski: Sometimes it is possible. And sometimes the target audience is just too widespread, speaks too many languages and just too diverse. But sometimes it is indeed possible. That all helps. It also helps with SEO down the line because, of course, brand recognition is something that massively boosts CTR. So there's always this issue that comes up, You know, how come is that always, it's always the same brands that pop up when I'm looking for a product? Well, because those are the very well-recognized brands. It's not an advantage to them. It's the user signals with their behavior or the click behavior that gives those brands that advantage.

44:35Kaspar Szymanski: The brand recognition really plays a role here. There's a couple of things. But really, if you want to play it safe, make sure that you make it an annual audit to make sure that everything is still as it should be, including technical signals. Everything is lined up. Technical signals, policy compliance, backlink signals. I think it's a diminishing factor, but it can be a risk. And other than that, there is of course the strategy that also is a viable option, which is operating a multitude of brands. And I know of people that are very conservative with some of their brands, and they have a completely different business, literally different accounts, different servers, everything is different.

45:22Kaspar Szymanski: where those brands that are operated separately are, let's quote, more in the gray zone. And that's a conscious business decision to run differently risk strategy. I don't think it's a particularly bad one, but my former peers might not approve of that approach at all. It's one way of making sure that your business doesn't come to screeching halt overnight when traffic isn't forthcoming. yeah and the last one i particularly like but it's like i think that's also going to depend on like the company strategy you know and like yeah if you're in a business that is trying to push those boundaries and fly close to the sun having those contingency fallbacks are probably going to be a heightened significance and important where if you're in kind of like a safer more standard lane like yeah maybe there's a different evaluation of like how much investment should you put towards those and it can always also be flipped where you keep your main one is the the slower steady more consistent one have your little canaries to then test different things that you might want to bring over um but i think there's a lot of value in that like diversification especially being that we're operating in such a dynamic kind of like volatile industry that is like change is something that we've always had so it's like you have to be able to pivot and have like multiple cards in your hand so to speak to play and there is one advantage to that of course we're talking about people that are less risk averse that that tends to to be open and to that avenue now for those among our listeners who see themselves as potential, you know, as potentially embracing that kind of strategy, please make sure that, you know, your portfolio doesn't look completely alike.

47:23Kaspar Szymanski: Because we happen to see a lot of cases where there's a large portfolio, there's diversification, but again, the CMS is identical, you know, and the logos look kind of like crap and really cheap. And there is just such a huge footprint and so many similarities, that's not diversification. That's a network. And networks are, once identified, they are easily tackled. So that's not a way to making sure that the risk is actually lowered. That's putting actually a giant bullseye on the entire operation. If you really want to diversify, make sure you actually do diversify. All the signals should be different.

48:07Yeah, it's, I think it's a great point where it's like doubling down on it. It's like, if you're going to go through that effort, you got to go all the way with it. Otherwise, it's like, it kind of just defeats the purpose in its own nature. Now, I want to be mindful of your time. So I'm going to throw a few more like shorter form questions for our lightning round here. And the first question that I'd like to ask is, what's the biggest misconception SEOs have about Google's August 2026 spam update?

48:42Kaspar Szymanski: I do believe that one of the biggest misconceptions right now is that sites are being affected merely for utilizing AI solutions and for the content in particular. And I do not believe that to be actually the case. Yes, there is a representative the volume of AI utilizing websites that have been affected. But it is not about how content is being produced. Rather, it is about the output and the quality of the content that triggers Google to flag them as low-quality sites. That's what the signal is really about. So AI is really front and center. It's a big part of the conversation here, but not in every single case.

49:27Kaspar Szymanski: much more important really is about the quality output and of the content that is being indexed and that is indexable because it doesn't really matter so much what kind of content is available on the website as long as it's knowing not indexable as long as no index is applied we're really talking about stuff only that google can see detect and gauge next one i have for you does using AI content one more time does using AI content to create one more time does using AI to create SEO content at scale increase your risk of a penalty? To be honest, it absolutely can and really comes down to the wider conversation we had just a moment ago where we talk about human oversight editorial process and quality insurance Content that is not so much made by humans, but content that is created for humans is the objective, right?

50:30Kaspar Szymanski: And not content that is created cost-effectively on a large scale in order to fill some quota, some arbitrary numbers. So using AI solutions can be absolutely great. totally recommend it as long as there is a full proof tried and tested and tested again process where the output is really validated and where there is human oversight ensuring that whatever comes out isn't easily detectable as AI solution that serves the only purpose that it serves being generating SEO content it's not supposed to be SEO content it's supposed to be content with added value, which of course can be as well data. We're not just talking about written words or paragraphs.

51:19Kaspar Szymanski: It can be additional information that is relevant, contextually relevant, to whatever the user is about to do. A very good example being if we're talking about an event website, information that shows popularity of certain sections of the stadium, which is literally just data, it's not written contest, content can be very much relevant to myself as a user looking for purchasing tickets because I want to be in the quiet area with my kids watching the game rather than being in the hardcore fan area. So this kind of information can be very well AI generated, but it must help the user rather than being created with Googlebot and SEO primarily in mind.

52:07100%. You increase that volume too high, there's probably going to be some sort of trade-off in the QA and validation process. So it's not necessarily the reason, but certainly the risk is going to increase a little bit more. Next one I got for you. What's the most common warning signal that a website is at risk of a potential Google manual action?

52:32Kaspar Szymanski: I'm afraid there is no clear-cut warning signal as a red light, nothing of that sort in Google Search Console. There is a warning sign, which, however, I'm very hesitant to recommend to look out for because it can be very misleading. There would be many false positives. And that is increased crawler activity in particular sections of the site, which can indicate that there is an impending drop or they can indicate absolutely nothing. They can indicate that Google has been more interested in that section of the website because they may have been more outside references or maybe internal references or maybe that query has been coming up more frequently because the topic is trending.

53:15Kaspar Szymanski: So in hindsight, yes, in hindsight, it's possible to correlate and increased activity on the server and where those bots actually went to as in comparison to the drop and the reason for that drop probably be somewhere around those landing pages that have been called more frequently. But this is not a warning sign. This is something that can be only utilized in hindsight as a potential opening for an investigation for remediation. Fair enough. And I think as you mentioned earlier in the conversation, there's lots of things that could be causing that. So there is a value of it in this context. But again, like your disclaimer, don't view that as an absolute and certainly keep it within, yeah, kind of normal ranges.

54:11Next one I have is what's the biggest mistake companies make when submitting a Google reconsideration request?

54:19Kaspar Szymanski: The by far biggest mistake is doing it straight away. Very frequently it happens on the assumption that there's a queuing system. We're going to go ahead and submit a reconsideration request and be that a really rational one or an upset one. It doesn't matter really much. And we're going to use the time to go ahead and look into what the issue really is about. Now, very frequently that will lead to rejection. and we have to keep in mind this is not widely documented. This is something that probably should be, you know, the industry should be more aware of. Every consecutive reconsideration request that has been rejected makes the task at hand harder because there is a loss in trust.

55:05Kaspar Szymanski: Everything is on record. So if a website has been applying for reconsideration time and time again, while at the same time not meeting the expectations and not introducing the changes that were necessary to the website, essentially it would have to increase that effort many, many times over the next time around in order to be successful. So rather than taking swift action, it is much more important, as I mentioned previously, to remain calm, to go ahead and understand first where this issue stems from. What's the actual reason? And, you know, there's even worse situations where website operators would actually proceed to delete bits and pieces of the website.

55:50Kaspar Szymanski: That's actually poor yet because that's not remediating the issue. That's just deleting content. So remaining calm, analyzing the situation before taking any steps is a much more prudent way and typically reduces the time of a penalty that is in place as in comparison to taking instant action and effectively often prolonging operating on the penalty which is not recommended it's such good advice and so valuable fight the urge to immediately like if you've received that manual action it is serious it's not the end of the world though so make sure you don't misstep on that first one which will then just compound the difficulty and complexity of the situation.

56:41Last question I have for you, Casper. If a website was negatively impacted from Google's August 26 spam update, what should they start doing immediately?

56:52Kaspar Szymanski: If they're not doing it quite yet, please go ahead and save and preserve your server logs. This is really, really important. Probably not going to be helpful in terms of kicking off the instant analysis that is necessary, But it can be helpful in understanding how the website is interacting with bots. And depending on the size of the website, of the volume of landing pages, it can be a godset. But ultimately it's going to come down to understanding what the website is about. So take all the documentation you have in-house. Ever think about all the changes introduced for the last, say, six to twelve months?

57:27Kaspar Szymanski: You know, put it in one place. Have the website crawled. If you want to do it in-house, there is great crawlers out there. Oncrawl is a very good one. Lumar is fantastic. JetOctopus, another one. Use a multitude of crawlers. Check how these signals are being read. And check, of course, for conflicting findings of these great tools that are out there. Look into Google Search Console for clues. I'm hesitant to recommend that course of action alone for a very simple reason. you're essentially telling the people that work every day on that platform to go ahead and find the chinks in their armor, to find the flaws.

58:09Kaspar Szymanski: And this is very difficult because a lot of teams out there are really passionate about the thing they work on. I think it's much more beneficial to bring in a trusted third party in the sense that there will be somebody that doesn't have the same emotional attachment to the project at hand, while at the same time they're able to work together without so much as pointing fingers. Those two teams working together is really, really, really important. It's a temporary solution, something that can be repeated on an annual basis. But initially, we're talking about remediating the drop, the recent drop.

58:50Kaspar Szymanski: An audit will be necessary. And then, of course, the question comes up. So you found out what needs to be done, how long is it going to take for Google to notice, and the answer to that question often lies in server logs, but essentially is around crawl budget and crawl budget allocation. Now crawl budget can be stimulated. If servers are really fast, if they're responding correctly, Google is likely to crawl the website much more in-depth, much more frequently. The internal linking can help us, of course, as well. But it really comes down to how long does Google need to crawl a critical mass of the website.

59:28Kaspar Szymanski: And if it's a very large website in the hundreds of millions, and the crawl budget is about, you know, let's say a tenth of that volume, and of course going to take several months. So this is not welcome news. But most sites are actually much smaller than that. So it can be gauged fairly accurately, whether it's going to take a month or three months. you can actually understand from the data what to expect and plan accordingly because it is not a manual spam action. You don't have to wait weeks and months for Google to respond. It's in your hands to introduce the changes and let Google know that you've done so, so that Google actually can call the website and it will rank again and possibly outrank previous highs because signals have been improved.

1:00:16Excellent. Well, I know I said that that was the last question, but I got one more. So bonus round question for it. And it's something that I've heard in the industry. I've seen sometimes too, but it'd be interesting to get your take on. And you see sometimes in the industry, SEOs reference that if you're negatively impacted from a core algorithm update, that sometimes it'll take until the following core update for that full reevaluation of the domain and the site to kind of fully rebound or recover. In regards to these spam updates, is that a false narrative that we've created in the industry or is there some value in that?

1:01:02Kaspar Szymanski: Not entirely. It's not wrong to assume that a core update will require essentially a new release for the website to be more visible again. That being said, Google has been very, very quick to release those and not all of these core updates are being made public. I mean, there is this overview page, of course, Google search incidents, which is lovely and gives a little bit of an understanding on what's going on. But the frequency with which Google has been rolling out updates has much increased over the last couple of years, which is, you know, both instances, it's a blessing and a curse because on the one hand, sites can be affected much more frequently, but they can also recover much more frequently.

1:01:54Kaspar Szymanski: So in that sense, I like to think in terms of what can be done, what's actionable. And there is no way to enforce or to stimulate even Google to release a new core update. That's completely out of our hands. So for website operators out there, for publishers, it's maybe relevant to know when those core updates are actually happening. But on the other hand it's a little bit like weather like it's this is seo weather and we can't do really anything about it so we can as well ignore it and instead focus on signals that where we are the ones taking the decisions and where we where we can have a positive impact so for that reason as much as this may not be very welcome news sometimes you have to wait a little bit but that's also one more reason that while our previous recommendation not having all your eggs in the same basket is much more important so diversification does also help to deal with that business risk in the seo and the e-commerce industry perfect and it's super helpful too because even if it's not what someone wants to hear i think like that information is extremely valuable because by nature you're having to mitigate and set expectations within the organization and if you oversell the recovery and the timeline that it's going to take for that, then it is inherently going to break down trust of not just yourself, but the team, the channel.

1:03:25So it is a really, really important factor to set the expectation in the organization to then set your program up for success.

1:03:34Kaspar Szymanski: Absolutely. And expectation management is a big part of our jobs in the industry. Not to oversell, not to overpromise, to be straight up, frank and fully transparent. And frequently, it also means to say those things that are really rather unwelcome news. But doing so really does foster trust, which is most important in business. 100%. Well, Casper, it's been a pleasure. Always enjoy our chats. But that is going to wrap up this episode of the Voice of Search podcast. Thanks again to Casper, Senior Director at Search Brothers, for joining us. If you'd like the content, Casper, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in the show notes on voiceofsearch.com, or you can visit his company's website at searchbrothers.com.

1:04:22If you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO, AEO, GEO, content marketing knowledge in your podcast feed, hit that subscribe button in your podcast app or on YouTube, and we'll be back in your feed in the following days. That's all for this episode. Thanks for stopping by, and we'll see you in the next one.

1:04:40Kaspar Szymanski: Thank you for having me. Always a pleasure.