Google's spam policy is against the site reputation abuse. Most sites under site reputation abuse are publishing third-party content without proper involvement. And this part of content is getting published on the sites to get rank juice from established sites.
Google made it clear that even first-party involvement in the content cannot prevent the site from reputation abuse. In most cases, clients are trying to exploit the ranking signals of the host website.
Google's Site Reputation Abuse Policy:
According to Google's Site Reputation Abuse Policy document, site reputation abuse is part of parasite SEO. It is a manipulative practice of stealing or influencing ranking from the host site.
Google's search quality member, Chris Nelson, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that site reputation abuse is damaging user experience. Google is cracking down on those websites.
Google first enforced its site reputation abuse policy in May 2024.
Sites like LATimes, CNN, USA Today, and major news agencies face manual penalties.
Glenn Glabe, SEO Consultant at G-Squared, posted
Here's my tweet with an example. USA Today, CNN and LA Times are missing from the top 10... when they were there yesterday for the query. Stay tuned. https://t.co/MxcxPF0Ksw
- Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 6, 2024
Google's Clarification:
In a recent update, Google clarified that third-party content published on a host website to influence ranking signals is against the search engine's guidelines. Even if the content is published by the webmaster, it still has no value for the user.
Google has reviewed thousands of websites and their structure before making this clarification.
What is the Site Reputation Abuse Violation?
Site reputation abuse policy violence examples are:
- News websites are publishing discount coupons.
- Sports websites are publishing medical content.
- Health websites are publishing casino content.
- Educational websites are publishing financial content.
- Movie websites publishing social media news.
What is not a Site Reputation Abuse Violation?
According to Google, legitimate practices are not against Google policies.
- Syndicated content
- UGC content on forums
- Editorial content
- Advertisement disclosure
- Affiliate Disclosure
Conclusion:
Google is making site reputation abuse policy part of its algorithm updates. This way, the Google algorithm will automatically detect violations of the site's reputation policy and penalize such websites.
Check your search console to find out any violation notification.
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