Google’s John Mueller was asked about over-optimization and if that can cause issues for ranking in Google Search. John replied saying, “Sometimes “over optimization” does drift towards “SEO-spam”.”
This came up on Bluesky where the question was from Martin SEO McGarry who asked:
Has Google recently targeted “over optimisation” Or is this hidden gems theory, easily confused?
Example
A long page with lots of detail, very natural, but unfortunately repetitive.
Suddenly outranked by a demo page (left in the system) with no content but similar meta title.
John Mueller’s full reply was:
It sounds like you have a specific situation in front of you, so generalizing probably doesn’t help much. Sometimes “over optimization” does drift towards “SEO-spam” (say you mention the keywords 1x, 10x, or 1000x on a page). My guess is you’re just seeing something coincidental here though.
The follow up asked:
It could easily look like spam (evident in more RECENT pogo rankings, flip flopping with other less keyword dense pages)… we can’t get away from the repetitions TBH. Its a regulatory issue, hosting 3rd party Tc & Cs on a list page for example and they’re pretty much full of the same phrases.
John replied:
I don’t know your pages, it’s just that there’s sometimes no clear border between “unoptimized”, “optimized”, “over-optimized”, and spam (though often spam is obvious in isolation). (Also, what is even “unoptimized” vs “optimized”? :-))
Over-optimization is a topic we covered here countless times – so add it to the bundle.
Forum discussion at Bluesky.