Blackhat SEO techniques used by spammers have forced Google to make changes to their ranking algorithm. Over the last few months spammers used Google Trends to find buzzy keywords and then created new content targeting those keywords to gain rankings. It would only take these new pages a short amount of time to climb up the rankings, which conflicts with Google’s goal of displaying the most relevant searches.

According to WebProNews, as recently as last week they were researching a story and the top five results all led to fake news stories. If this trend of gaining quick rankings were to continue, Google runs the risk of losing trust with its users and losing a good percentage of the search volume. A Googler confirmed to WebProNews that a change was pending to combat the recent spam issues.

Over a million links targeting malicious web pages ranking for auto part searches was identified by security company PandaLabs. Google also noted that many of the phrases mentioned in the report were long tail terms, such as “1989 Nissan Pickup Truck Engine Check Light Troubleshooting.”

The need for real-time information online seems to be the reason for the recent spamming concern. Google has always provided the most relevant information to its users, but the need for real-time searches is opening doors for blackhat techniques.

A timeframe for the algorithm change was not announced by Google.