The impact of the 2025 Google Spam Update on Job Boards
"Great" news - Google just finished another search update!
What is a Google Spam Update
Google spam updates are targeted algorithm changes designed to improve search result quality by identifying and penalizing websites that violate Google's spam policies. While Google's automated systems to detect search spam are constantly operating, spam updates represent notable improvements to how these systems work, often involving enhancements to SpamBrain, Google's AI-based spam-prevention system.
Some sites, like HubSpot, have been notoriously hit with every spam update:
The screenshot shows HubSpot’s organic traffic performance after the 2024 and now 2025 spam updates.
Yes, they lost A LOT of traffic - almost 80% down. So, generally speaking, you should care about these updates.
When did the August 2025 Spam Update Start
Google's August 2025 spam update began rolling out on August 26, 2025, and was completed on September 22, 2025, spanning a duration of 27 days. This was the first spam update of 2025 and the first since December 2024.
The update hit very quickly, already at the start, then there was a slowdown and after that, a second wave of volatility around September 9th
Why do Spam updates matter for job boards?
When Google announces and confirms a Google search update, it is generally significant for every website.
Job boards often utilize programmatic SEO tactics (category pages, salary reports) and also AI-generated content. Spam updates frequently target these two SEO strategies, as they usually result in low-quality content that fails to consider the user’s needs.
How long does the recovery process from a spam update take?
Well, the answer, as always with SEO, is that it depends on the issue.
If you receive a manual action, the recovery process typically requires demonstrating consistent policy compliance for months before Google's systems restore trust and rankings.
If you have a technical issue that was targeted by this spam update, it may take several weeks to resolve.
What does the August Google Spam Update target in job boards?
The truth is that we don’t really know for sure.
The spam updates focus on a range of issues that are not relevant for the majority of “good actors” in the job board space; nevertheless, some of these issues are also relevant to us due to the nature of how job boards operate.
Link spam
Unnatural or manipulative linking strategies are not the typical tools that job boards use, but if you have been working with a media agency or have recently hired a new SEO agency, it is worth reviewing the backlinks for quality.
As a general strategy, you should ALWAYS prioritise links earned through genuine mentions, PR coverage, or valuable resources you’ve created.
Thin or low-value content:
This is the largest area to explore as a job board. The nature of a job board is that we create millions of programmatic pages – category pages (senior marketing manager jobs in New York part-time).
Pages that exist primarily to manipulate rankings rather than provide real value.
AI-Generated Content
Generative AI can be beneficial for creating content, but it is also used to automatically generate low-quality content solely for the purpose of manipulating search rankings. In short, if you are using generative AI tools or other similar tools to create many pages without adding value for users, you will be penalized.
Some things that come to my mind:
- Writing generic occupation pages without any custom input
- Using AI to create employer profiles (without any editorial content or external data sources)
- Creating salary reports based on GPT prompts (I’m not sure why people think this will work but I have seen it).
You can find the complete list here
Technical SEO issues
Check the Page Indexing report and Crawl Stats report to ensure the traffic drop isn't due to technical problems. Technical issues are errors that can prevent Google from crawling, indexing, or serving your pages to users.
Due to the use of programmatic SEO, job boards are often plagued by technical issues that Google may incorrectly identify as spam. For example, I would always be on the lookout for Soft 404 errors, as they are specifically negative for job boards.
How to recover lost traffic after a Google Spam update as a job board?
The Google August Spam Update is now marked as complete, but your Search Console is still bleeding?
What is next?
If you lost traffic after or during this spam update, I would generally wait for a week after the release for things to “get normal” and then another week to collect
some “fresh” performance data for the actual review.
So, while you are waiting for these two weeks, you can already start:
Check your basics
Here is what I would check for the following:.
- Any increase in duplicates?
- Increase in soft 404?
- Any massive deindexing of pages?
The last part is explicitly tricky so that I would look at different windows.
Check your pages performance
You have covered the basics, and you now have 1 week of solid data. Then, you should start examining your page types.
The question we are trying to answer is:
What type of pages saw the most significant drop in traffic MoM? Is it jobs? Is it category pages? Is it blog posts? Is it another form of programmatic content?
For the August 2025 spam update specifically, set your date range to include data from before August 26, 2025 (when the update began) through late September when it completed.
Sometimes, the effect of the spam update is already present weeks before the rollout. If you see a drop before August 26th, consider this the start of your event window.
Monitor programmatic pages (category pages, salary reports, employer pages) and blog pages that Google moves from indexed to any of the categories crawled, not indexed:
... but also discovered, currently not indexed:
This is a powerful indication of what type of content Google does not like on your site and if there are recent changes, look at them.
Check your queries
With the process described above, you can also check which keywords changed significantly before and after the update.
This can reveal other signs of what Google does not like; for example, if you started rolling out programmatic pages for salary reports and suddenly your keywords related to “salary product manager new york” have dropped to zero clicks.
Check for manual actions in the Google Search Console.
For most of you who are familiar with SEO, this should not come as a surprise; however, for some individuals new to the industry, it can be easy to overlook.
Check the Manual Actions report in Search Console to see if any issues have been flagged for your website, and remove the pages listed there.
Need some help with your Job Board SEO?
If you were affected by the August 2025 spam update and your job board’s organic traffic was impacted, please drop me a message using the contact form or reach out directly on LinkedIn.
I work directly with over 30 worldwide job boards and support more than 130 indirectly through my advisory work for some of the leading job board SaaS vendors. I will be happy to help.
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