In March of this year, during a previous update, Google announced that it was working on “updating [its] spam policies to keep the lowest-quality content out of Search”. It seems that Google is gradually shifting to an environment where genuine, helpful, well-researched content triumphs over copy-pasted, AI-generated spam. We’re all for that. However, in its most recent rollout, which began in August 2024, Google seems to have taken several steps backwards.
In fact, as you’ll discover below, Google seems to have taken several giant leaps backwards.
The Update
The new Google update promises to give more weight to independent websites devoted to providing quality content, thus reducing the rankings of sites created exclusively to game the system with SEO tactics of the moment.
Potentially, it means that a blog created by an experienced gambler detailing in-depth gaming strategies has more authority than affiliate sites churned out by major organisations connected to gambling operators.
The Issue
If you search for commonly used gambling keywords, including “free spins no deposit UK”, you will see a lot of links to sites that seemingly have nothing to do with gambling. When you click these links, you’ll be redirected to gambling top lists—usually, the same lists pointing to the same brands.
In our research, we found sites that were getting a handful of daily hits before the update, before jumping to thousands of visitors a day. All of this traffic is being directed to top list pages.
Not only does it go against what Google has been promising with its recent updates, but it also goes against everything we know about the gambling niche and SEO. Typically, it’s very hard to rank highly in this sector, and it’s even harder to do so with spammy, irrelevant content. Yet these gambling top lists are being hosted on sites that have nothing to do with gambling. They are using generic, unoriginal content copied from elsewhere, and they’re being rewarded with massive traffic surges.
The Cause: Hacked Sites
If you’ve ever run a WordPress site, you may have an idea of what’s happening here. An organisation devoted to caring for children does not willingly publish gambling content, even if it does increase its traffic. These pages are spam, and they’re seemingly being posted following hacks that occur as a result of unsecured WordPress plugins.
We know because we’ve been there ourselves. We have been the victims of this exact scam. In one case, a site that had been left dormant and wasn’t even indexed by Google was hacked via a plugin, and the hackers used it to post dozens of gambling articles. In our case, we didn’t see a surge in traffic as the site remained unindexed, but we know of many cases where traffic volumes skyrocketed almost overnight.
All of these articles contain affiliate links, sending high volumes of traffic to the scammer’s affiliates and earning them money as a result. In time, they might be punished and penalised, with their rankings dropping significantly. But by that time, the spammers have moved on, and the only one who suffers is the webmaster who got hacked.
How is This Happening?
Hacks like this have been happening for years. The issue is that Google is now prioritising independent creators, so hackers are changing tact. They are targeting small, unsecured sites and using them to post spam littered with affiliate links.
Google, somehow, is allowing this to happen. It’s not responsible for the hacks, of course, but it is responsible for ranking those sites and prioritising them over genuine and original content.
It’s bad news for the people who create that content. It’s a kick in the teeth for creators who invest time and money into publishing helpful, well-researched content. What’s worse is that Google doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it, and by changing its ranking algorithms in this manner, it’s playing right into the hands of the spammers.