Not everything in the world is black and white, that includes the SEO world. Someone pointed John Mueller of Google to, what looks like a PR reporting tool, and suggested it was used to manipulate Google’s guidelines and buying links. I am not sure, I didn’t spend time looking into it. But John Mueller from Google responded that it is okay to submit “uncertain” spam reports to them.
He said when you do submit uncertain spam report it helps “gives insight into where folks aren’t sure about the lines.” He said this on Twitter:
We get lots of spam reports — some are more actionable than others. I’m ok with uncertain reports, it gives insight into where folks aren’t sure about the lines. Anyway, SEO can work well without breaking the guidelines too, and it helps everyone to have a level playing field.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) March 3, 2019
Trust me, there is a lot of confusion and gray areas around Google’s webmaster guidelines. There is of course some basics that everyone gets but when you get to specific examples, sometimes, there is a gray area.
You and I see it all the time.
In this case, I didn’t look into it but if it is just a reporting tool then it is no different then using Moz, Majestic, ahrefs, or even Google Search Console – at least that is what I’d think?
Forum discussion at Twitter.