Google's Gary Illyes: I've Talked To SEO Spam Email Senders

We all get it and get it a lot, email spam selling links, DA, PR, and metrics around trying to improve your rankings in Google by manipulating Google's algorithm. Some of this spam comes from places like India (not all) and Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter he has even traveled to these places and spoken to some of the people who send out these emails.

Gary said "most times they have no clue what they're doing or why." He said they do it because "There's just money in it and that's a great motivator; people do buy sometimes their services." But they really do not know that they are breaking Google's webmaster guidelines or doing it in a way that is unethical.

Here is Gary's somewhat fascinating tweet:

I get them, too. Sometimes I even go to the parts of India where they typically reside and talk to them, and honestly, most times they have no clue what they're doing or why. There's just money in it and that's a great motivator; people do buy sometimes their services.

— Gary "鯨理／경리" Illyes (@methode) November 8, 2019

I wonder if Gary meeting SEO email spammers in person impacts what policies or actions Google takes on these efforts. Of course we know Gary and Google has said numerous times that these efforts don't help, Google will ignore these links. So maybe that is why Google went from a punitive link spam methodology to one that just ignores the links without specifically punishing them.