Google updated their spam reporting documentation to make it clearer that spam reports are not wholly confidential and that it’s possible for personal identifiable information to be shared with the sites receiving a manual action.
Change In Response To Feedback
Google’s changelog noted that they were updating the spam reporting form based on feedback they’d received about personal information contained in the spam report that is shared with spammy sites that receive a manual action (formerly known as a penalty).
The update contains a new notice that spam reports containing personal information will not be processed.
The changelog noted:
“Clarifying when and why we may take manual action based on spam reports
What: Further clarified when and why we may take manual action based on spam reports.
Why: To address feedback we received about the change on using spam reports to take manual action.”
Google removed the following from their documentation:
“If we issue a manual action, we send whatever you write in the submission report verbatim to the site owner to help them understand the context of the manual action. We don’t include any other identifying information when we notify the site owner; as long as you avoid including personal information in the open text field, the report remains anonymous.”
The above wording was replaced with the following:
“Don’t include any personally identifying information in your submission. To comply with regulations, we must send the submission text to the site owner to help them understand the context of a manual action, if one is issued.
Because of this, we won’t process your submission if we determine it contains personally identifying information to protect privacy. Not including such information fully ensures your information is safe and prevents your submission from being discarded.”
Action Moving Forward
On the one hand it’s good that Google won’t proceed with a manual action if the report contains personal information. This means that if you’re submitting spam reports to Google, don’t name your site, business name, personal name or anything else that you don’t want the affected spammer to know.
Read the updated documentation here:
Report spam, phishing, or malware
Learn more about Google’s spam reporting tool: Google Just Made It Easy For SEOs To Kick Out Spammy Sites
Featured Image by Shutterstock/andre_dechapelle
