Spamming Works!*
* at least in terms of Google rankings in the very short term.
When I talk to small business owners about search engine optimisation and online marketing, I tell them to stick to "white hat" methods - wholesome, positive changes they can make to provide more value to visitors and to hopefully push their website up the search rankings.
This is in contrast to "black hat" SEO which involves things like stuffing your site full of keywords, using generative AI to create dozens of pages, hiding text on your site, paying for links, and so on - shady and spammy activities that Google and other search engines really don't want you to do.
The unfortunate reality of online marketing, though, is that the shady stuff can work really well - that's why Google doesn't want you to do it! Google knows that its algorithm can be manipulated by spammy tactics, and so they penalise the sites that take those approaches when they catch them.
That last four words there are key - I'm writing this in 2025 when Google's usefulness is at an all-time low (many articles have been written about its crappy results) and its search results are often filled with garbage, so clearly Google isn't doing a very good job of actually "catching" spammers in a lot of cases. Maybe they're trying their best? I doubt it, since Kagi is a much tinier search company and their results are way better, but for now lets give Google the benefit of the doubt.
Given that the shady stuff can work really well to bump your site up the rankings, should I instead be advising businesses to spam instead of improving their site? Spamming probably has the better "return on investment" in the very short term, after all.
I still think the answer is "no, you shouldn't spam" - and here are my reasons:
The downsides of being penalised are too intense
Most small businesses are really attached to their domain name - they have it printed on their uniforms, their vans, their business cards, and it's probably mentioned in dozens of places online.
Falling foul of Google's spam-detection algorithms can mean that domain is effectively erased from search results. Getting listed again can be a gruelling, multi-month process involving manual appeals, link disavowals, and lots of waiting around - and it might never happen. The more spamming that was done on your behalf, the harder it will be to undo things if you get caught.
This would be ruinous to many small businesses. Even if most of your customers come from "word of mouth", you want them to be able to search for your business name (or a close-enough approximation of it) and find your site rather than having to remember the exact domain. Being blocked from search results can make this impossible.
Google's algorithms change all the time
Yes, in 2025 it's fair to say that Google's results are full of spam. But will that be the case next year, or the year after? We can hope not - and indeed, Google have rolled out algorithm updates in the past (like Panda and Penguin) which totally upended the "search engine optimisation" world and heavily penalised sites doing things they'd totally gotten away with before then.
Keyword-stuffed text can look really gross
As someone who reads lots of web pages every day I'm pretty good at determining whether the content provides any real value, or if it's just waffle written for search engine optimisation purposes.
While I can forgive the occasional shoehorned insertion of a keyword into an otherwise normal sentence, I'll be very dissuaded from using a company's services if their website's text is so full of keywords that it becomes difficult to understand what the page is actually about.
I think a lot of people are like me, who read the content of the websites they visit and evaluate whether it was written for a human or an algorithm.
Many people can spot AI-generated content
A study last year showed that 50% of people can spot AI-generated content - and I doubt that when those people see websites full of it they think "oh, what a novel use of large language models". They instead probably think something like "oh, this website owner has cut corners on their content, so I wonder which other corners they've cut".
If you're one of the people who can't spot AI-generated content and doesn't think it reads differently from human-created text, you might think that everyone is like this! But that's not the case - many people are pretty good at telling if something was written by a chatbot or a human.
A focus on spam means a lack of focus on value
The best way for a business to do well is to listen to the needs of its potential customers and to orient itself to match those needs. This is what "white hat" SEO is all about.
But "focus" is a finite resource. If you're spending time focusing on paid backlinks, or keyword density, or other spammy techniques, that's time you're not spending making your business more appealing to your future customers.
If you spam the bejeezus out of your site and get it to the #1 spot for a competitive term, but you've neglected to focus on the visitor experience once they're actually on your site, you're onto a loser. All the visitors in the world won't help if none of them convert into customers.
You might risk legal penalities
Some spammy tactics are actually illegal in the UK. For example, commissioning or writing fake reviews is against the law, and while it's still somewhat unlikely that you'll get caught, the reputational damage if you did could be huge.
Similarly, I imagine it's only a matter of time before someone gets charged with copyright or trademark infringement after using generative AI to write content for their business - after all, the AI models are trained on copywritten works.
Spam makes the internet worse for everyone
Maybe this should have been the first point, but speaking as a lifelong nerd - spam makes the internet worse in general. It's hard to Google things now because the results are full of spam. You can't trust Reddit threads any more because there's so many attention-farming AI spammers using the site. My social media feeds are full of get-rich-quick schemes and people promising the earth.
Basically, spam sucks, and makes every internet user's day a bit less pleasant, and I think it's very legit to not to want to contribute to that.
Closing thoughts
I think we're going to continue to see spam "work" until Google prioritises the quality of its results over its advertisement revenue. But that doesn't mean you should become a spammer. The downsides to your business are very real and could be catastrophic!
Doing things the "right" way can be a slog, sure, but it won't be risky and it doesn't involve learning anything particularly technical or esoteric. Just keep the focus on providing real value to site visitors, and try and keep the faith that it will pay off even if you're not seeing dramatic gains every day - and it will pay off, eventually - I promise!*
*not a binding promise - maybe it won't pay off, maybe we're doomed to a spammy internet forever, maybe the robots will win, ahh nooooo!