Below is what it looks like to be penalized by Google for AI-generated spam.
A website that gained 830,000 monthly visits from Google search vanished after the algorithm update.
7. Article Spinning & Scraped Content
Image from author, November 2024
Article spinning is a technique that involves re-writing content by substituting synonyms, changing sentence structure, or re-writing text entirely while communicating the same information as the source material.
Article spinning or scraping can be done manually, but modern techniques often use AI and sophisticated software, making it harder to detect.
For a good reason, such articles degrade the quality of the internet, which is why Google penalizes you.
8. Cloaking
Cloaking is an old black hat trick that’s still used to this day – use a flash or animated page to conceal information your visitors that only Google can see in the HTML.
It’s very difficult to mislead Google without being detected. Google uses Google Chrome’s data, which means it can see what is rendered on the webpage on the users’ side and compare it to what is crawled.
If Google catches you cloaking, you’ll get a penalty.
9. Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are a form of cloaking.
They’re designed to rank for particular keywords but then redirect visitors to other pages.
They’re also known as:
Bridge pages.
Portal pages.
Jump pages.
Gateway pages.
Entry pages.
10. Scraping Search Results And Click Simulation
Scraping search results for rank-checking purposes or using bots to access Google Search is against their spam policies.
This often takes place in conjunction with article scraping, when an automated script scrapes Google Search to find articles ranking in the top 10 positions for automatic spinning.
Another type of spam is to program a bot that accesses Google and clicks on search results to manipulate click-through rates.
They aim to mislead search engines into thinking that certain pages are more popular or relevant than they are. This manipulation can temporarily boost a site’s perceived engagement metrics but harshly violates Google’s guidelines.
11. Hidden Content
Like a hidden link, hidden content is content that’s made the same color as the background or moved away from users’ screen view using CSS techniques.
It’s a tactic that intends to include as many keyword phrases, long-tail keywords, and semantically linked words as possible on a page.
Of course, Google’s algorithm can tell the difference between keywords within the body of a paragraph and keywords hidden in the background.
Hidden content can take several routes to your site beyond being intentionally placed there by the site owner.
You could publish a guest post from someone who includes hidden content.
Your commenting system could be insufficiently rigorous and, as a result, fail to pick up on hidden content.
Your website could get hacked, and the hackers could put up hidden content. This is also known as parasite hosting.
An authorized user could accidentally put up hidden content because they copied and pasted text with CSS styling from a different source.
Not all hidden content, like accordions or tabs, is forbidden.
The rule of thumb is that content is okay as long as it is visible to both the user and the search engine.
An example may be content that’s only visible to mobile visitors but is hidden to desktop visitors.
12. Keyword Stuffing
Image from author, November 2024
If SEO were only about using keywords, then a block of keywords would be all it takes to rank as No. 1.
However, since Google wants to deliver high-quality results, it is looking for content-rich in semantically linked keywords.
That way, the algorithm is more likely to provide high-quality content instead of content that simply bears the superficial markings of high-quality content.
13. Rich Snippets Spam
Image from author, November 2024
Rich snippets are snippets with more information on SERP pages. Enhanced visibility can increase CTR to your site from SERPs and drive more traffic.
But there are many ways that the schema used to generate these snippets can be manipulated. In fact, there is an entire Google support page dedicated to it.
However, if you get a manual action because of abusing structured data, it will not affect the rankings of your website. Instead, it will remove all rich snippet appearence from SERP for your website.
Bottom Line
The rewards of the black hat path are short-lived. They’re also unethical because they make the internet worse.
But you can’t do something right without knowing how to do it wrong, which is why every white hat SEO also needs to know about the black hat path.
That way, you know how to steer clear of it.
And if you accidentally get penalized or decide to change your practices, there are ways to recover from Google’s penalties.
More Resources:
Featured Image: PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock