Google has released a statistics series which show how they fought web spam last year. The statistics comprise a part of Google’s annual Webspam Report.
This report includes details about the most common webspam tactics used throughout the year and the extent to which Google has tackled the efforts of people who do spam.
At present, the amount of spammy sites in search result is considered to be around 0.5%. Hacked sites is a type of spam tactic which grew in 2017. Sites which were hacked were hacked either for spreading malware or for manipulating search engines. Google states that more than 80 percent of hacked sites have been removed from search results.
Here are a number of notable statisitcs from Google’s 2017 Webspam report:-
- Action has been taken on almost 90,000 user reports of search spam.
- A year-over-year reduction of spam links by nearly half
- Improved Safe Browsing protections for macOS devices.
- 45 million messages sent through Search Console allowing website owners to know about problems identified with their websites.
- Allowed predictive phishing protection in Chrome.
- Launched notable improvements for protecting users from deceptive Chrome extension installation.
- Performed more than 250 online and offline events around the world to a total audience of more than 220,000 website owners.
- Google’s official support forum has 63,000 threads generating more than 280,000 contributing posts by 100+ Top Contributors globally.