Google has posted a clarification that says it now “Google may use spam report submissions to take manual action against violations.” The update was posted here and added to the report spam page.
The previous version only said:
Ranking manipulation techniques that attempt to compromise the quality of Google’s search results violate our spam policies and can negatively impact a site’s ranking.
The updated version now says:
Ranking manipulation techniques that attempt to compromise the quality of Google’s search results violate our spam policies and can negatively impact a site’s ranking. Google may use your report to take manual action against violations. If we issue a manual action, we send whatever you write in the submission report verbatim to the site owner to help them understand the context of the manual action. We don’t include any other identifying information when we notify the site owner; as long as you avoid including personal information in the open text field, the report remains anonymous.
Now, I think, but I can be wrong, that this is a change to how things worked in the past. Google said previously, spam reports were not used for manual actions.
As you can see, Google now says:
(1) Google may use your report to take manual action against violations.
(2) Those notifications can contain “whatever you write in the submission report verbatim to the site owner to help them understand the context of the manual action.”
(3) Google said it won’t “include any other identifying information when we notify the site owner.”
Forum discussion at X.
