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Does reporting SEO spam work?
Posted by on December 12, 2025 at 11:12 pmPosting this out of frustration mostly, but also hoping someone who’s been through this might know something I don’t.
A competitor in my niche has been pumping out 40 to 50 AI-generated articles a day for the past 12 to 18 months. They scrape press releases, rip off journalists, invent experts and companies that don’t exist, and flood Google with low-effort SEO bait (even the spelling is American, which we’re not). They’re ranking for everything and winning clients off us and others because they show up first, then selling an expensive product to the public on the back of that visibility.
I kept expecting one of the Google core updates to nuke them but if anything their rankings have gotten stronger.
We’re a very small operation that pays journalists and run proper SEO which everyone here knows isn’t cheap, but we do it anyway. We cite real sources and stick to our editorial standards. I’ve reported individual articles to Google for misleading content and fake citations, but as one person it feels like yelling into the void.
Does anything actually work to get this in front of Google (they’d take one look at it and see clearly how they’re trying to game the system). Or is mass AI sludge a viable permanent strategy now and we’re mugs for trying to do quality work? I’m tearing my hair out trying to justify us to clients against them & I could never go the low quality AI route
I’m trying to work out whether this is even reportable in a way that leads anywhere.
Keen to hear from anyone who’s dealt with something similar and found a way to slow it down. Thanks for reading
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1 Reply
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Spam report swirl but not like a Google DMCA or legal take down request (which would be relatively instant)
The Google spam report isn’t a direct line to Google to say “remove this page”
Firstly – Google needs to establish if it is spam and how it’s spam
Google doesn’t manually interfere with the algorithms- it can’t – that would be incredibly time consuming. Eveything Google doesn’t manually interfere has to be done within the algorithms. Tweaking it for outlier cases would mess it all up
So the spam would have to fall into either a new heuristic set or they’d have to figure how to tweak an existing heuristic set
Then it would have to fit into a GCU roadmap of it was determined to fit
So – yes spam reports work but not immmediately
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Part 2
“I’ve reported individual articles to Google for misleading content and fake citations, but as one person it feels like yelling into the void.”
However this is not what reports are for. – this isn’t spam. Spam is where a site breaks one of the spam policies that Google offers. Incorrect information isn’t one of them. While a lot of people mistakenly promote Google as a know everything engine that can use plan to research whether eveything is true or not – it’s just not the case and actually is so impossible that Google could never do it
So yes – you’re yelling into a void – Google doesn’t police facts and fiction – sorry
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Unfortunately, reporting works very differently than people expect.
If they’re scraping copyrighted work, DMCA is your fastest option. Otherwise, sites like this often ride things out until a scaled-content or spam update catches the pattern, which can take a long time.
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Honestly, the spam reports feel like yelling into the void because they kind of are. Google isn’t going to manually nuke a site just because you filed complaints.
DMCA is your best bet if they’re actually ripping content. That has teeth. Otherwise you’re just waiting for an algo update that may never come.
Focus your energy on what you can control. Double down on your own content quality, build actual authority, and let them themselves with their own rope eventually. Sites like that usually eat a core update eventually, but “eventually” could be another 18 months.
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You can also use AI but with verification. You can’t hate the player
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Their content doesn’t sound that great TBH. You should work on beating them with higher quality content and research.
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