December 2024 Spam Algorithm Update Trends

[JoyHawkins]

I have heard some people stating that the December spam update was significant. What are you guys seeing? I'm finding it particularly hard to measure since most sites' traffic is severely down during Christmas as it is, and this update started right before.

 

[keyserholiday]

It was massive. Many websites that got hit were using low-quality AI content. The best way to audit the decreases is with Semrush. Look at position changes and pages. It's rich with data.

 

[JoyHawkins]

@keyserholiday What industries were those? Are they small business sites?

 

[keyserholiday]

@keyserholiday What industries were those? Are they small business sites?

This was a personal injury lawyer. We got one website owner to share their website, and we could see why they got hit. I posted a link to another "website" that was pure low-quality content.

 

[rustybrick]

This was a big one.

 

[codyecp]

It was massive. Many websites that got hit were using low-quality AI content. The best way to audit the decreases is with Semrush. Look at position changes and pages. It's rich with data.

I've had this hunch for quite some time. We've been using a free tool from Writer.com for AI detection. If it doesn't show as at least 96% or above human written, that page generally ranks at least 4-5 spots lower than the competitors. More recently we starting using AI as a writing assistant, that always needed a thorough QA/adjustment.

Does anyone know if this would effect the domain or just the individual page? In other words, no domain-wide penalty for low quality AI content on individual pages on a site?

 

[keyserholiday]

While it's rare to see a sitewide manual action, it can happen. Typically, a Google update will demote or deindex low-quality content.