Timothy Malmros Genach joins Google as head of anti-spam

Based in Sweden, Genach founded the affiliate network company Magenti Media in 2009. After the business was acquired by Gaming Innovation Group (GiG) in 2016, he served as the listed company’s director of SEO until October 2018. More recently, he has been known in the iGaming space for his multi-part investigation into ClickOut Media’s alleged parasite SEO tactics, although the series has since been taken down following a reported lawsuit filed by the affiliate.

Announcing the move in a LinkedIn post, Genach said he was “excited to share” that he had joined the search giant as head of anti-spam “after careful consideration”, following an invitation from search relations team lead John Mueller.

Starting immediately, Genach will focus on tackling large-scale spam networks and expired domain abuse, addressing misuse of canonical signals and authority hijacking, improving detection of low-value, AI-generated and parasitic content and accelerating response times to emerging spam patterns.

“Search is at a critical inflection point. Over the past few years, the landscape has shifted rapidly, with increasingly sophisticated spam tactics, large-scale content manipulation and new forms of ‘grey zone’ SEO challenging the quality of results users rely on every day,” Genach wrote.

“There’s no silver bullet here, but there is a clear direction of rewarding genuine value and reducing the impact of manipulation. I’m looking forward to working with some of the brightest minds in search to push this forward.”