November 2021 spam update: dates, what changed and what to do

What Google changed#

Google released the November 2021 spam update without publishing details of what it changed. The Search Status Dashboard entry says only “Released the November 2021 spam update.” Google’s general description of spam updates is that its automated spam systems run constantly, and it announces a spam update when it makes “notable improvements to how they work.”

When it rolled out#

The dashboard records the rollout from 3 November 2021 to 11 November 2021, with a listed duration of 8 days and 1 hour, all times US/Pacific. The dashboard did not exist in 2021: the entry and its completion note (“The rollout was complete as of November 11, 2021”) were added on 22 March 2023.

No other confirmed update overlapped it. The November 2021 core update started six days after it finished, on 17 November 2021, so a change in the second half of November is more likely tied to that update.

What is known about its impact#

Google published no impact figures for this update. Its spam policies state that “sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all.” Any percentage you see attributed to this update is a third-party estimate, not Google’s figure.

What site owners should do#

Google’s guidance for spam updates is short:

• Review the spam policies and check your site against each one, including link schemes, cloaking and scraped content.
• Fix violations. Google says changes may help once its automated systems learn “over a period of months” that the site complies.
• For link spam, expect no recovery of ranking value the links provided: Google says those benefits “cannot be regained.”

How to check whether it affected you#

In Search Console, set the Performance report to a range from October to December 2021 and compare clicks for the week before 3 November with the week after 11 November. Stop the comparison before 17 November, when the core update began. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists every confirmed update with its dates, so you can rule out overlapping rollouts before attributing a change to this one.

Related updates#

• The June 2021 spam update and July 2021 link spam update were the spam updates before it.
• The November 2021 core update began six days after it finished.
• The October 2022 spam update was the next spam update.