Google Announces New Site Reputation Enforcement Update

Site Reputation Abuse

Google's SearchLiaison has confirmed that the site reputation abuse update by Google began on Monday, May 6th. Numerous websites on the internet have removed webpages that may appear to contain third-party content in order to improve their search engine rankings.

One strategy that has seen a resurgence is when a marketer leverages another website to boost their own content's ranking on search engines. This practice involves a publisher piggybacking on another publisher's website.

Certain novice marketers have coined the term "parasite SEO" to describe this tactic. However, this name is not entirely accurate as a parasite typically survives off a host organism without consent, whereas this approach to ranking involves mutual agreement rather than one site forcefully overtaking another without permission.

Google Targets Third Party Content

Many major brands, especially in the credit card and product review industries, use this strategy as well. It's not just limited to low-level affiliate marketers.

This spam policy focuses on websites that have third-party content, but the site owner is not involved in what is published. Just hosting third-party content alone is not enough to be considered spam according to Google's definition.

Site reputation abuse occurs when third-party pages are published without proper oversight or involvement from the first-party site. These pages are created to manipulate search rankings by leveraging the ranking signals of the first-party site. Examples of such third-party pages include sponsored, advertising, partner, or other independent pages that offer little to no value to users and are not closely monitored by the host site.

Google's SearchLiaison recently announced on Twitter that the new policy regarding site reputation abuse is now in effect.

He tweeted:

“It’ll be starting later today. While the policy began yesterday, the enforcement is really kicking off today.”

Recently, some popular websites have taken down sections that contained product reviews without proof that the reviewer had actually used the products. These reviews did not include original photos of the products, measurements, or testing results.

It is recommended to read Google's guidelines on Site Reputation Abuse.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Lets Design Studio

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