How Google’s August 2025 Spam Algorithm Update Impacted Local SEO [Case Study] – Google August 2025 Spam Update

Google’s algorithm updates are nothing new, but I’m seeing a lot of small businesses get penalized by the August Spam update in 2025 and wanted to show you one example and why I believe they were impacted.

It wasn’t a massive crushing blow to their traffic, like I have seen with other sites, but it took out their most important keyword pattern that is the main description of what they do. Imagine this was a plumber (it’s not), and they lost the most traffic for “plumber dallas”. Not ideal.

 

Their organic rankings were what got hit here, while their local pack rankings remained stable.

 

The thing is, they have been declining for the last few months. In fact, if you look back at the spring, the grid was all green and they were in the top 3 organic positions.

 

So why were they declining? Well, I noticed a very clear trend in their traffic decline. The entire site was not tanking. In fact, there were tons of pages that saw increases. The ones that were tanking were all a similar keyword pattern. So I headed over to Ahrefs and saw that the keywords dropping the worst were ones that had exact-match anchor text from spammy backlinks.

 

Now here is the kicker. These were not new links. In fact, some of them had been created 5 years ago.  The links were mainly comments on forums and blogs that used keyword-rich anchor text like this example.

 

So how on earth did I conclude that five-year-old links were the root cause? Well, the anchor text identically matched the keywords that were tanking but the big trend that mattered was that these sites were also tanking recently. So whatever benefit they used to give this business was being unraveled. I also saw this exact same pattern multiple times on sites last year with the August 2024 Core update.

In these examples, you can see how referring domains are going up, yet organic traffic is going down. This is a very bad sign and usually an indication that Google has devalued your manipulative form of link building and no longer is giving you any value from it. 

 

 

When I looked in Majestic, it was clear the sites were also likely part of a Private Blog Network (PBN) which is a fancy word for a network of sites that just exist to link to each other and help each other rank.

 

So what now? How do you recover if you have had this happen to you?

Well, my answer might surprise you. I’m not intending on going after those rankings they lost. I’m going to go with a strategy Kyle Roof talked about in my interview with him. This concept is called the Avalanche technique and it’s the concept of going after keywords that you actually can rank for easier to build up your credibility to the point where you deserve those hard-to-get ones. 

This site is actually a perfect candidate for that. There are tons of opportunities for keywords where they already rank in the top 10 but are not in the top 1-2. These are often what I call the SEO goldmine because going from position 2 to 1 has a substantial impact on your click-through-rate. 

The problem is that people go after these types of links because they work, and they work fast. When a business comes and hires you to do SEO, they often don’t want to wait months and pay thousands of dollars. And how much would they love you if you were actually able to rank them in a week? The thing is, you can, with some of these black hat SEO strategies that this site was using. However, when you build your house on sand, you have to expect that one day it will come crashing down. And that’s the situation we’re in now. 

So I hope I can convince this business owner to stick with me while I restart on that foundation, so that a year from now, I have a really awesome success story to share with you all. Recovery won’t be overnight, but with a sustainable strategy, this business can regain visibility and stability. The short-term pain of rebuilding is worth the long-term gains of earning rankings that last.

Understanding Google Penalties and Prevention Strategies

To avoid algorithmic penalties in the future, businesses should focus on building high-quality, relevant backlinks from authoritative sources rather than relying on toxic link networks. Monitor your link profile regularly using tools that track link velocity and spam signals.

If you’ve been hit by a Google penalty, consider using the disavow tool to remove low-quality links, though natural link devaluation often occurs without requiring manual action.

The key to penalty prevention is understanding that competitor analysis should inform your strategy, not your tactics—never replicate manipulative methods just because competitors use them.