Black hat SEO
Black hat SEO is the name for tricks meant to fool search engines into ranking a page higher, by breaking their rules. Google's spam policies call these tricks spam, including attempts to manipulate the AI answers in Google Search, and say sites that use them may rank lower or drop out of results. White hat SEO follows the rules.
Source: Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search (last updated August 28, 2026), checked October 29, 2026
What Black hat SEO means for your business
Google's spam policy page names cloaking, which means showing Google one page and visitors another, and buying expired domains and filling them with low-value pages to game rankings. Its opening line also covers trying to manipulate the AI answers in Google Search, so tactics sold as ways to trick AI fall under the same rules.
Grey hat SEO is the label people use for tactics in between. Google's spam page doesn't use the term and says Google may act against any kind of spam it finds, beyond the ones it lists, so we'd treat grey hat as a guess about where Google draws the line.
If you hire help, Google's page on hiring an SEO is worth reading. It says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking, and that if an SEO makes deceptive content for you, your site could be removed from Google's index entirely. We'd ask any SEO or AI search vendor what they'll change on your site and which Google documentation backs it, a question Google's page suggests too.
If a past vendor promised quick rankings and you're not sure what they did, SEO and AI search work that stays inside Google's rules starts with finding out what was done.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, Google's AI Overview cited SEO tool blogs, Wix and Quora; ChatGPT cited nothing. Both listed the familiar tricks, neither mentioned that Google's spam policies cover manipulating AI answers, and ChatGPT said Google uses the term gray hat, which its spam page doesn't.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
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