Google’s Site Reputation Abuse Policy Update
Google has updated it’s site reputation abuse policy, which was first introduced in March 2024. So what does this mean to us as Digital Marketers, SEO’s & content creators and why did it need to be updated.
Google have clarified their site reputation abuse policy.
“Our evaluation of numerous cases has shown that no amount of first-party involvement alters the fundamental third-party nature of the content or the unfair, exploitative nature of attempting to take advantage of the host’s sites ranking signals.”
Site Reputation Abuse:
Site reputation abuse is the practice of publishing third-party pages on a site in an attempt to abuse search rankings by taking advantage of the host site’s ranking signals. More importantly. Google have since clarified their policy language to further target this type of spammy behavior.
“We’re making it clear that using third-party content on a site in an attempt to exploit the site’s ranking signals is a violation of this policy — regardless of whether there is first-party involvement or oversight of the content.”
Why the Update Was Needed:
The change addresses long-standing complaints about search quality degradation caused by exploitative partnerships, like those involving affiliate or sponsored content. Users and SEO experts criticized practices where irrelevant or low-value content ranked highly due to hosting on trusted domains, creating a poor search experience.
They are announcing three new spam policies against bad practices we’ve seen grow in popularity: expired domain abuse, scaled content abuse, and site reputation abuse.
- Expired domain abuse is when the expired website domain is purchased for the purpose of repurposed primarily to manipulate Search rankings by hosting content that provides little to no value to users. This was considered as a an acceptable thing to in SEO terms some time ago which gives more relevance to the point of this policy.
- Scaled content abuse is when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating Search rankings and not helping users. This abusive practice is typically focused on creating large amounts of unoriginal content that provides little to no value to users, no matter how it’s created.
- Site reputation abuse is when third-party pages are published with little or no first-party oversight or involvement, where the purpose is to manipulate Search rankings by taking advantage of the first-party site’s ranking signals. Such third-party pages include sponsored, advertising, partner, or other third-party pages that are typically independent of a host site’s main purpose or produced without close oversight or involvement of the host site, and provide little to no value to users.
- They encourage content creators to review all of our spam policies and ensure they aren’t engaging in such practices. Sites that violate our spam policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. If affected by a spam manual action, site owners will receive a notice through their registered Search Console account and can apply to have the action reconsidered.
Google’s Search Liaison Danny Sullivan pointed out that the algorithmic portion of the Site Reputation Abuse policy is coming soon and that the enforcement is purely manual for now. Manual actions are when actual humans at Google personally review sites to determine if they should receive a manual action, which generally means removal from the search index.
There was an an old SEO strategy that has apparently made a recent comeback, when a marketer will piggyback their content on another website in order to rank it in search engines. As a result of this many sites from across the web took down webpages that could be perceived as hosting third-party content for the purpose of ranking in search engines. Google’s Search Liaison confirmed that the site reputation abuse policy enforcement “is really kicking off”.
Also to clarify that having third-party content alone is not a violation of the site reputation abuse policy. It’s only a violation if the content is being published in an attempt to abuse search rankings by taking advantage of the host site’s ranking signals.
It marks an evolution in how Google identify the helpfulness of content. This is just one of thousands of improvements Google’s search team make throughout the year.
Danny describes this as, ‘Once we’ve decided on a change, we carefully evaluate it with quantitative feedback from live experiments and qualitative feedback from our human reviewers. If everything looks good, we ship it. For example, today we’re updating how we rank product reviews in Search to prioritize in-depth, first-person content.’
Last year, the Google Search team conducted more than 800,000 experiments and ongoing quality tests to make sure the results they deliver — and changes they launch — actually make Search more useful for people. And they feel pretty confident this process is working.
Over the last seven years, their internal metrics based on quality rater data show they have decreased the number of irrelevant results by over 50% which is phenomenal. Google have a team of third-party Search quality raters selected from all over the world are highly trained using extensive guidelines. Their feedback helps Google to understand which changes make Search more useful.
Google’s Core Updates are algorithmic changes, which Google implements several times annually, are designed to improve the overall search experience by reassessing how content is evaluated and ranked.
Unlike targeted updates, core updates affect search results globally across all regions and languages. This clarification to thr site reputation abuse policy will help surface the most useful search results, combat manipulative practices, and ensure that all sites have an equal opportunity to rank based on the quality of their content.
The site reputation policy doesn’t affect website content creators who have been making content for people and not for solely SEO ranking purposes where they manipulate search engines to rank higher.
The spam policies detail the behaviors and tactics for the website that are in violation of this, it will lead to an entire page or site being ranked lower or completely omitted from Google Search.
As Digital Marketers, SEO’s and content creators we need to stay true to our values that align with Google’s to provide the best and most relevant information that is helpful to our users at all times.