Jan 9, 20232 min read

Google's December 2022 Link Spam Update: What You Need to Know"

In December 2022, Google updated their spam detection system with a new AI tool, SpamBrain.
SpamBrain is able to identify spammy links, as well as detect sites that bought links and sites that were primarily used to pass links to other websites.
The update may have affected search rankings, but as long as best practices for acquiring and linking to other pages were followed, it was unlikely to have a negative impact on a website.

What is Google's latest update?

In December 2022, Google will be upgrading their spam detection system with a new AI-based tool called SpamBrain.

This system will not only be able to identify spammy links but also detect sites that buy links and sites that are primarily used to pass links to other websites.

So, what does this mean for your website?

Well, it's possible that your rankings may change as SpamBrain neutralizes unnatural links and removes any signals passed to the linking domain. This update will affect search results in all languages, so it has the potential to have a widespread impact.

However, if you're following Google's best practices for acquiring and linking to other pages, it's unlikely that the December 2022 link spam update will have a negative effect on your site.

Just make sure to tag affiliate links with a "rel=sponsored" tag and links in guest posts with "rel=nofollow" to avoid any issues.

We hope this update helps your efforts and that you continue succeeding in search engine optimization.

How to mark a link as sponsored or no follow on your website?

To mark a link as sponsored, you will need to add a "rel=sponsored" tag to the link's HTML code. Here's how to do it:

Go to the page on your website where the link is located.
Click on the link to select it.
Click on the "Edit" button in the top menu.
In the "Link" tab, click on the "HTML" button.
In the HTML code, add "rel=sponsored" to the link tag. It should look something like this: <a href="http://www.example.com" rel="sponsored">Link Text</a>
Click "Update" to save the changes.

That's it! You have now marked the link as sponsored on your website. Be sure to follow this process for any sponsored links on your site to ensure compliance with Google's guidelines.