Cloaking
Presenting different content or URLs to search engines than to users with the intent to manipulate rankings; a Google spam policy violation.
AlgorithmsHacked spam
Security issues and hacked content
Malware, phishing, deceptive pages or injected spam on a site, reported in Search Console and often accompanied by browser warnings.
In full
Hacked content is a spam policy category and Google may show a warning label in results or block access via Safe Browsing, which destroys traffic immediately. Injected spam is often cloaked so it appears only to crawlers or only from search referrers, which is why the URL Inspection live test and log analysis matter in diagnosis. Cleanup requires removing the content, closing the vulnerability, and requesting a review.
Example
A neglected CMS plugin allows injection of hidden pharmacy pages visible only to Googlebot, discovered via a `site:` search.
Related terms
Manual action
A demotion or removal applied by a human reviewer at Google for a spam policy violation, reported in Search Console with a reconsideration…
Google spam policies
Google's documented list of behaviours that can cause lower rankings or removal, covering cloaking, doorways, hacked content, keyword…
Google Search Console
Google's free property-level reporting and diagnostics service covering search performance, indexing status, enhancements, manual actions…
URL Inspection tool
A Search Console feature showing Google's indexed state for a URL plus a live test with rendered HTML, screenshot, and page resource…