Shortly after making AI Mode available to 180 countries for English searches, the company announced a new search engine update focused on targeting sites that qualify as “spam”.
Google commented on its LinkedIn profile:
Today we released the August 2025 spam update. It may take a few weeks to complete. This is a normal spam update, and it will roll out for all languages and locations. We’ll post on the Google Search Status Dashboard when the rollout is done.
Unlike “core updates”, which seek to improve the quality of search results, the “spam update” specifically focuses on targeting sites that abuse practices such as automatic content generation or abusive techniques for external link generation.
How does this affect tourism sites?
These types of updates are not as large as “core updates”, since they only focus on sites that have engaged in practices not approved by Google.
If you have been implementing any of these practices, I recommend reviewing how your traffic data looks. However, by removing sites cataloged as spam from search engines, it’s likely that some traffic improvement may be observed on other sites.
