Why did the October spam update crush so many sites? Important for all SEOs and website owners!

The October 2022 spam update had a massive impact on many sites. Many of these were "niche sites" - not overtly spammy, but still breaking Google's spam guidelines. With this update, it looks like Google's AI spam fighter - SpamBrain has gotten much better at finding unnatural links - links made for SEO purposes.

This is an important listen, even if you were not impacted by this update.

Buy Marie's Quality Rater's Guidelines Book/Checklist:
https://mariehaynes.com/book

Google's Spam Policies (If you were hit, you likely were doing one or more of these things)
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies

Google's guidelines on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content

What Google has said about guest posting:
https://www.mariehaynes.com/google-guest-posting-recommendations/

Gary Illyes talking to Danny Sullivan about links being labeled as "footer", "penguinized" and so on:
https://searchengineland.com/googles-link-labels-260892

What links can you get that comply with Google's Guidelines?
Marie's Moz Whiteboard Friday. It's old, but still good.
https://moz.com/blog/what-links-comply-googles-guidelines-whiteboard-friday