Spam-Fighting Algorithm Update 3.0 Released By Google

Matt Cutts made another algorithm-related announcement last week at SMX Advanced, although it had nothing to do with either Panda or Penguin. Instead, it was to do with the PayDay Loan algorithm that was launched around this time last year, which targets what Cutts refers to as “spammy queries”.

Despite the algorithm being updated as little as three weeks ago to version 2.0, Cutts announced that another update, version 3.0, would be introduced on June 12th.

The difference between the two updates is that spammy sites were the main target for version 2.0, whilst spammy queries are being focused on in the latest algorithm update. Update 3.0 was released on Thursday last week, although Matt Cutts gave little away when it came to differentiating between spammy sites and spammy queries.

It would seem that Google have identified another solution to the common nuisance that is online spam, with spammy queries becoming the main point of focus just a few weeks after Google decided to target spammy websites.

Spammy queries usually include results associated with payday loans, pornography and online betting. Matt Cutts did also refer to negative SEO factors when discussing version 2.0, so it could be that this is the main reason for the swift update and spammy queries are more of a sideshow.

Ultimately, there’s little information on the reasons behind this algorithm update at this time. What we do know is that Google are feverishly looking for ways to combat spam without the use of previous algorithms, so could we see more advanced spam-fighting tools released in the future? We’ll wait for more information from Matt Cutts on this one in the meantime…