How Google Updates Affect a Link Building Strategy

For years, linkbuilding operated under a relatively stable premise: accumulate links from domains with sufficient authority and manage anchors carefully. Starting in 2022, that premise came under increasing pressure. Google published more specific documentation about what it considers link manipulation, deployed algorithmic updates that directly affected sites with questionable backlink profiles, and announced structural changes to how it interprets link signals.

This article synthesizes what Google's official documentation, quantitative studies from Semrush, Ahrefs, and Search Engine Land, and public statements from industry specialists say. The period covered runs from 2022 to early 2026. Sources are identified with dates and direct links.

Why This Debate Matters Now

The volume of Google updates increased perceptibly between 2022 and 2024. Search Engine Land recorded at least 12 officially named updates during that period — counting Core Updates, Spam Updates, and the Helpful Content Update before its integration into the core algorithm in the March 2024 Core Update. Before that cycle, the average pace was 4 to 6 annual updates with documented impact.

For linkbuilding strategies, the relevance is direct: several of those updates explicitly targeted link schemes, content created to manipulate rankings, and sites operating as link intermediaries with no real editorial value. Understanding the scope of each update is not an academic exercise; it is the foundation for deciding what type of links to build, from which sites, and how frequently.

For those who also need to understand the punitive side of the process, Penalizaciones manuales y algorítmicas por enlaces en Google details how both mechanisms are triggered and what distinguishes them.

What Google Says in Its Official Documentation

The primary reference here is Google Search's spam policies (most recent update: November 2023), which define with greater precision than earlier versions what constitutes a link scheme.

The document lists as prohibited practices: buying or selling links that pass PageRank, large-scale link exchanges, link building campaigns with artificially optimized anchor text, and the use of automated programs to create links. The new element compared to previous versions is the explicit mention of "excessive keyword-rich anchor text" as a spam signal — not just raw link volume.

In the context of the Link Spam Update of October 2022, Google published a note on the Search Central blog stating that its improved spam detection system could "neutralize or nullify" the credit from low-quality links, not just penalize the receiving sites. This distinction is technically relevant: it implies that some toxic backlinks simply stop counting, while others may lead to manual actions.

Regarding the Helpful Content Update, incorporated into the core algorithm in March 2024 as confirmed by Google Search Central in its official March 2024 announcement, the relevant signal for linkbuilding is indirect but substantial: sites with content classified as created primarily for search engines — rather than users — lost overall visibility, including the ability to pass link value. Publishing on sites with that profile degraded the return on outreach campaigns that did not filter by editorial quality.

John Mueller, Google's Search Advocate, stated in a Google Search Central Live session in 2023 that links from sites with low-quality content "have less value than most people think" — a statement that reinforces the logic that the quality of the linking site matters as much as domain metrics.

What Quantitative Studies Show

Semrush published in its Google algorithm volatility analysis that sites affected by the August 2023 Core Update showed, in a significant proportion, backlink profiles with a high concentration of exact match anchors and a low percentage of referring domains with their own editorial content. The analysis identified correlation, not causation — which is methodologically important when interpreting the data.

Ahrefs, in its study on ranking volatility and backlink profiles, found that sites with the steepest drops in the October 2022 Spam Update tended to have a high proportion of links from domains with low organic traffic of their own. The ratio of referring domains with more than 100 monthly visits was notably lower among penalized sites compared to those that maintained or improved their rankings.

Search Engine Land documented in its coverage of the Helpful Content Update (August 2022) that sites with a high percentage of "unhelpful" content experienced visibility drops that did not recover simply by removing that content — recovery required a sustained improvement to the domain's overall editorial profile. This has a direct implication for linkbuilding: publishing on domains that at the time had a low ratio of useful content may have retroactively reduced the value of those links.

Backlinko, in its 2023 ranking factors analysis based on 4 million search results, maintained that unique referring domains continue to be one of the strongest correlators with rankings, but added a new qualification compared to previous versions of the study: the topical relevance of the linking site showed greater correlation with rankings in competitive niches than it had in data predating 2022.

What Specialists Say

Marie Haynes, an SEO consultant specializing in Google updates, noted in her Marie Haynes Consulting newsletter (January 2024) that the most consistent pattern among sites that recovered from the Helpful Content Update was a combination of improving their own content and diversifying their link profile: "Sites that only did disavow did not recover. Sites that improved the general perception of editorial authority did."

Barry Schwartz, editor of Search Engine Roundtable, documented in multiple posts between 2022 and 2024 that webmasters reported traffic fluctuations correlated with unannounced updates, suggesting that Google deploys spam infrastructure updates on a continuous basis, not only during officially named events.

Lily Ray, SEO Director at Amsive, published on her LinkedIn profile (October 2023) an analysis of sites that lost visibility in the August Core Update: "Most of the affected sites had no manual penalties. The algorithm simply reassessed domain authority downward. The backlink profile was one of the factors, but not the only one."

Glenn Gabe, an independent SEO consultant, has documented on his blog G-Squared Interactive since 2022 cases of sites that did not recover traffic despite cleaning up their link profiles, leading to the conclusion that the Helpful Content System evaluates the domain holistically. His reading is that aggressive linkbuilding on sites with weak content amplified algorithmic damage rather than protecting against it.

From the Spanish-language market, Adrián Segovia, an SEO consultant with a presence at events such as Brighton SEO en español and speaking engagements in Argentina and Mexico, noted in 2024 publications that the practice of buying links on editorially low-quality media — widespread in LATAM — became riskier since the 2022 Spam Update: "It's not that it was safe before. It's that now the algorithm detects it with greater precision and the impact is faster."

Fernando Maciá, co-founder of Human Level Communications and a leading SEO reference in Spanish, has written on his blog that Core Updates function as a global reassessment of a domain's value, and that the backlink profile is one signal among many: "An impeccable link profile does not rescue a site with poor user experience signals or content lacking topical depth."

Points of Agreement Across Sources

Comparing the official documentation with studies and specialist statements, several consensus points emerge:

• The quality of the linking site matters more than before. Both Google's documentation and the analyses from Ahrefs and Semrush point in the same direction: a domain with high metrics but no real traffic or genuine editorial content passes less value than it did three years ago.
• Diversification of referring domains remains relevant. The Backlinko study confirms that unique domains maintain a positive correlation with rankings. There is no evidence that this has changed.
• High-volume exact match anchor text is a risk signal. Google states this explicitly in its spam policies and several specialists document it in real cases.
• Spam updates are more frequent than official communications suggest. Schwartz and Gabe document consistent fluctuations outside of named events.
• Cleaning up a link profile is not enough to recover from an algorithmic drop. This point is consistent across Haynes, Gabe, and Ray: the overall quality signal of the domain carries as much weight as the backlink profile.

Points of Disagreement

Not all readings converge. There are at least three areas where interpretations differ materially:

1. The real weight of disavow after 2022. Some specialists, including Haynes, maintain that the disavow file remains useful in cases of active manual penalties. Others, like Gabe, document cases where disavow produced no recovery, raising the question of whether Google already ignores those links automatically without requiring webmaster intervention. Google's official position is ambiguous: John Mueller has said at different times that "in most cases it's not necessary" and also that it can be useful if there is a manual action. The guía sobre disavow file y cómo armarlo correctamente develops this point with practical guidance.

2. Whether the Helpful Content Update directly affected backlink profiles or only overall visibility. Google's documentation does not explicitly link the HCU to the evaluation of outbound links. The connection between "site with unhelpful content" and "link that passes less value" is an inference by specialists such as Haynes, not an official statement. Semrush treats it as correlation, not causation.

3. The differential impact in markets with low editorial competition. In low-search-volume niches or markets with a small editorial ecosystem, some professionals in LATAM report that strategies that would be risky in English-language markets continue to produce results. This discrepancy has no published quantitative validation, but it is consistent as a practical observation within the industry.

Applied Reading for the Spanish-Language and LATAM Market

The Spanish-language digital media ecosystem has characteristics that make the impact of updates partially different from what studies in English document:

First, the supply of sites with verifiable organic traffic and consistent editorial standards is more limited than in the English-language market. This has two consequences. The first is that the cost per link on genuinely high-quality sites is proportionally higher. The second is that a significant portion of linkbuilding in LATAM is carried out on directories, low-traffic niche blogs, or sites created specifically for link sales — all profiles that Spam Updates have targeted directly.