Policy & Penalties: a timeline
Google's spam policies and how they are enforced: manual actions, site reputation abuse, scaled content abuse, and reconsideration. Unlike a core update, a policy problem usually has a specific cause that can be found and fixed.
Latest policy & penalties news · This month's policy & penalties recap · RSS for this topic · What Google said about it
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October 2026 3 headlines
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August 2026 8 headlines
Spam update August 2026 spam update began 18 Aug
- Google won’t respect manual actions for site reputation abuse in European Economic Area
- Update to the Site Reputation Policy
- Google Updates Site Reputation Abuse (Parasite SEO) Policy
- AI-Generated Images Can Perform as Well as Stock Photography
- New EU Guidelines For AI Labelling
- Google Alcohol Advertising Policy Update On September 30
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May 2026 1 headline
Core update May 2026 core update began 21 May
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April 2026 1 headline
How this is built
Every archived headline is tagged with topics by keyword. Each month shows the most significant policy & penalties headlines by this site's impact score, plus any Google update that began that month. Months with nothing archived are left out. The archive began in earnest in mid-2025, so earlier months are thin.