# Google spam policies > Google defines spam as deceiving users or manipulating Search, including generative AI responses; violations can lower rankings or remove a site. The policies GEO tactics most often hit are cloaking, hidden text, keyword stuffing, doorway pages, link spam, scaled content abuse and site reputation abuse. Accordions, tabs and screen-reader text are not hidden-text abuse. - URL: https://geo.casa/content-structured-data/spam-policies/ - Reference · Officially documented - Reviewed: 2026-10-26 ## What counts as spam > **Officially documented:** > Spam "refers to techniques used to deceive users or manipulate our Search systems into featuring content prominently, such as attempting to manipulate Search systems into ranking content highly or attempting to manipulate generative AI responses in Google Search." > > Sources: [Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) > **Officially documented:** > Google detects violations through automated systems and, when needed, human review that can lead to a manual action. "Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all." > > Sources: [Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) ## Policies GEO tactics run into **Cloaking.** Serving AI crawlers or search engines a different page from the one people see fits the definition of cloaking. A keyword-rich version only for bots is one example. > **Officially documented:** > Cloaking means presenting different content to users and search engines to manipulate rankings and mislead users. One example: "Inserting text or keywords into a page only when the user agent that is requesting the page is a search engine, not a human visitor". > > Sources: [Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) **Hidden text.** Text placed for machines but not people, such as instructions aimed at AI systems in white-on-white text. > **Officially documented:** > Hidden text or link abuse is placing content "in a way solely to manipulate search engines and not to be easily viewable by human visitors", for example white text on a white background or text positioned off-screen. Accordions, tabs, sliders, tooltips and text only accessible to screen readers don't violate the policy. > > Sources: [Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) **Keyword stuffing.** Repeating a query or listing every city or variant you want to appear for. > **Officially documented:** > Keyword stuffing is filling a page with keywords or numbers to manipulate rankings. It includes "Blocks of text that list cities and regions that a web page is trying to rank for". > > Sources: [Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) **Doorway pages.** One page per near-identical query or city, funnelling people to the same place. > **Officially documented:** > "Doorway abuse is when sites or pages are created to rank for specific, similar search queries." Examples include substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than to a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy. > > Sources: [Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) **Link spam, scaled content and borrowed reputation.** Buying links, mass-producing pages and placing content on high-authority sites are covered in [Scaled content abuse](https://geo.casa/content-structured-data/scaled-content-abuse/) and [Site reputation and expired domain abuse](https://geo.casa/content-structured-data/site-reputation-abuse/). > **Officially documented:** > Link spam includes buying or selling links for ranking purposes. It also covers links "with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites." > > Sources: [Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) ## Sogou's definition, for comparison > **Officially documented:** > Sogou defines cheating as deceiving the search engine to raise rankings. The main method is showing users a different page from what the crawler fetches. Its list covers hidden text or links (including abused image ALT), keyword stuffing or unrelated trending keywords, and excessive link exchanges. It also covers deceptive redirects or content swaps, mirror sites on many domains, malicious ads or code, and linking to cheating sites. > > Sources: [Sogou: 站长指南](https://www.sogou.com/docs/help/webmasters.htm) > **Officially documented:** > Sogou's penalties run from lowering the site's overall ranking to indexing only its normal pages. For illegal content, malware or concentrated user complaints, it refuses the whole site. A cleaned-up site can apply to have the penalty lifted. Repeat offences are punished more severely. > > Sources: [Sogou: 站长指南](https://www.sogou.com/docs/help/webmasters.htm) The list overlaps Google's on cloaking, hidden text, keyword stuffing and link schemes. Sogou's guidelines are older and say nothing about AI answers or mass-produced content. ## Not spam > **Officially documented:** > A paywall isn't cloaking "if Google can see the full content of what's behind the paywall just like any person who has access to the gated material". Likewise, not every site in an affiliate program is a thin affiliate. Good affiliate pages add original reviews, testing or comparisons. > > Sources: [Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) Some duplicate content within a site is also not a violation ([Claim: Duplicate content gets your site penalized](https://geo.casa/crawling-indexing/duplicate-content-penalty/)). ## Sources - [Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) - [Sogou: 站长指南](https://www.sogou.com/docs/help/webmasters.htm)