July 2021 link spam update: dates, what changed and what to do

What Google changed#

Google announced the update on 26 July 2021 in a Search Central post that was mostly a reminder about tagging commercial links. At the end it announced a new link spam fighting change, “which we call the ‘link spam update.’” Google called it “even more effective at identifying and nullifying link spam more broadly, across multiple languages.” Google did not put a month in the name; July 2021 is used here to tell it apart.

The post asked sites in affiliate programs to qualify those links with rel=“sponsored”, and said sites publishing or buying links through sponsored and guest posts without the right tags may face “algorithmic and manual actions.” Google’s John Mueller said on X, as reported by Search Engine Roundtable, that there was no need to switch existing nofollow links to sponsored.

When it rolled out#

Google said the update “will rollout across the next two weeks.” It took longer. On 24 August 2021 Google’s Danny Sullivan confirmed it was done, as reported by Search Engine Roundtable. The account that posted it has since been deleted. The Search Status Dashboard did not exist yet.

The page experience update was still rolling out for the whole period, so a ranking change in August 2021 may have either cause.

What is known about its impact#

Google published no impact figures. Asked what share of results the update affected, Google’s Gary Illyes replied on X “yes but i won’t,” after confirming it was “global and language agnostic.” In its 2021 webspam report Google said only that it launched a link spam update “to broadly identify unnatural links.”

What site owners should do#

Google’s spam detection systems are still in use, and link spam remains one of its current spam policies. Google’s spam update guidance warns that after a link spam update, “any ranking benefit the links may have previously generated for your site is lost.” In practice:

• Stop buying, selling or exchanging links for ranking purposes.
• Tag affiliate links with rel=“sponsored” and paid or guest post links appropriately.
• Do not expect cleanup to restore rankings that bought links once supported.
• Focus on content quality and user experience, which Google says beats manipulating links.

How to check whether it affected you#

Search Console keeps 16 months of data, so its reports no longer cover 2021. Use archived analytics exports and compare the week before 26 July 2021 with the week after 24 August. If the drop tracks pages that relied on paid or guest post links, this update is the likely cause. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists the overlapping updates.

Related updates#

• The Penguin 4.0 update made Google’s link spam system part of core ranking.
• The November 2021 spam update was the next spam update.
• The December 2022 link spam update was the next link spam update.