How do I check my site against Google's spam policies?
On this page
Open Audit, Site Health, find Google spam policies and press Run the check. It reads up to 30 pages of your site, which takes about a minute, and checks them against five practices Google's spam rules name: content made at scale, dates changed without the page changing, hidden text, pages built one per town, and keyword stuffing. Each finding shows the pages it is on, and what was checked and found clear is listed too.
The five practices
| Practice | What it means |
|---|---|
| Scaled content abuse | Lots of pages made to a template with little real content of their own |
| Deceptive freshness | A page's date changed without the page itself changing |
| Hidden text | Text on the page that visitors cannot see but search engines can |
| Doorway pages | A set of near-identical pages, often one per town, made only to catch searches |
| Keyword stuffing | One word or phrase repeated far more than reads naturally |
Reading the results
Each finding has a severity (Critical, High or Medium), the pages it was found on, What to do, and Fix to add it to your to-do list. If one of Google's updates in the last 90 days named that practice, the finding is marked recent update targeted this and names the update.
Checked and clear lists the practices that were checked and found nothing. If nothing is found at all, it says Nothing found across N pages.
There is no spam score. A number like "63% spam risk" would be invented and could not be acted on, so the check shows only what it found and where.
Updates in the last 90 days lists Google's recent updates with their dates, which helps if your traffic has fallen.
Deceptive freshness needs history
To spot a date that changed without the page changing, the check needs a record of what your pages said before, which builds up from your site scans. Until there is enough, it says deceptive freshness was not checked. Come back after a few more weeks of scanning.
Questions people ask
My traffic fell, but nothing was found. What does that mean?
It is not one of these policies. A core update, one of Google's broad changes, reassesses every site rather than penalising a page, so the answer is usually relative: someone else got better at answering the same searches. See opportunities and your plan and page checks.
How is this different from page checks on SEO Results?
Page checks give every page in your site scan a verdict, including spam signals such as keyword stuffing and doorway sets. This check looks at up to 30 pages on demand, against each named policy, and lists Google's recent updates beside them. See low value pages.
Can I run it again after fixing?
Yes. Press Check again.