Remember when we reported that Google Groups seems to have seen a visibility boost in Google Search, which resulted in a lot of spammy and sometimes dangerous information showing up in Google’s search results. Bleeping Computer now reports that Google is ending support for Usenet groups on Google Groups to fight spam.
“Google has officially announced it’s ceasing support for Usenet groups on its Google Groups platform, a move partly attributed to the platform’s increasing struggle with spam content. The upcoming changes will take effect from February 22, 2024, after which users can no longer post, subscribe, or view new Usenet content through Google Groups,” the report wrote.
Do you think it is related to the reports from the search community about Google Groups content spamming up the Google Search results?
Glenn Gabe posted about this on X yesterday and wrote, “Following the Google Groups spam problem? Interesting development -> Google Groups is ending support for Usenet to combat spam.”
The Google support document writes, “Starting on February 22, 2024, you can no longer use Google Groups (at groups.google.com) to post content to Usenet groups, subscribe to Usenet groups, or view new Usenet content. You can continue to view and search for historical Usenet content posted before February 22, 2024 on Google Groups.”
Google added, “Over the last several years, legitimate activity in text-based Usenet groups has declined significantly because users have moved to more modern technologies and formats such as social media and web-based forums. Much of the content being disseminated via Usenet today is binary (non-text) file sharing, which Google Groups does not support, as well as spam.”
It does make you wonder if this will solve some of those spammy issues within Google Search?
Here is more on this issue:
More about the Google Groups drop. Checking some of the queries that dropped, and the content that was ranking, I’m seeing many messages deleted and some of those urls deindexed. So maybe a mix of tweaking the “hidden gems” algo + changes on the site itself. Very interesting. pic.twitter.com/lXeb671Fwv
