Google launches a new on-page SPAM fighting algorithm as part of it's 2011 New Years resolution to be more aggressive in fighting this growing epidemic.
SPAM is bad for the Google business. It makes search less useful for searchers--as the content results are diluted with unwanted items or worse. Additionally, distribution methods for SPAM are becoming techniques used for more nefarious content and websites, like those that hold malicious code.
This new Google algorithm is already live--as confirmed by Matt Cutts on his Google/SEO blog. This algorithm will particularly focus on websites that copy the content of other websites. The penalties of this new technique could also affect websites with authentic forms of duplicate content, so webmasters and designers may need to rethink approaches to design, SEO and information architecture that involve duplicate content. Some eCommerce websites and blogs may be examples of such a legitimate scenario.
The net affect of this new technique may involve only 2% of search queries with some measure of change. The ultimate goal of this approach was to remove or devalue websites that have scrapped or copied content.