In a press release published on its Search Central space, Google clarified its policy relating to the abuse of site reputation. This announcement is part of the policy initiated in March during its Core Update, which aimed to sanction hosted content “without close supervision” in order to “manipulate search rankings”. Here’s what you need to remember.
Abuse of site reputation: Google refines its definition
Google reminds that “Site reputation abuse is the practice of publishing third-party pages on a site with the aim of abusing search rankings by taking advantage of the host site’s ranking signals”. Generally, these are sponsored or advertising links, for which the advertiser pays in order to obtain visibility on a site unrelated to its offer.
The line is sometimes fine: some sites publish third-party content without harming the reader’s experience or trying to manipulate the search engine. Conversely, Google has noted examples where the abuse of a site’s reputation occurred despite action taken by the host site on third-party content. A practice against which the search engine now wishes to fight more effectively.
Since the launch of this policy, we have considered situations where there may be varying degrees of first party involvement, such as cooperation with white label services, licensing agreements, partial ownership agreements and other complex commercial agreements, specifies Google.
What is, or is not, site reputation abuse?
On its page dedicated to rules related to spam, Google provides specific examples of practices that fall under the abuse of site reputation, as well as others that do not fall under it. As is often the case, the question of the quality of the content for the reader is central.
Practices relating to abuse of site reputation
The following practices are considered by Google to be site reputation abuse:
- A medical site that hosts a third-party page on the best casinos, without a direct link to the medical content, with the aim of influencing the rankings.
- A sports site that hosts a page containing reviews of workout supplements, written by a third party, without the involvement of the editorial team.
- A news site that offers third-party coupons without supervision or direct involvement, solely to manipulate rankings.
Practices not relating to abuse of site reputation
However, the following practices are not considered by Google to be abuse of site reputation:
- Using wire services or press releases, or publishing news that repeats or syndicates content from other sources.
- Hosting user-generated content, such as forums or comments.
- Advertising content produced with the active involvement of the host site for direct sharing with readers.
- The inclusion of properly tagged ads or affiliate links.
- Coupons created and managed with close involvement of the host site.
View all examples
Site reputation abuse: how does Google react?
Google says it has systems that can identify whether a section of a site is different enough from the rest to be considered independent. If a section uses reputational abuse practices, then it will be treated as a separate site. It will therefore not be able to benefit from the authority and reputation of the main site to improve its ranking in search results.
According to Google, this clarification “will help surface the most useful search results, combat manipulative practices, and ensure that all sites have an equal chance of ranking based on the quality of their content”. This also means that Google can choose to penalize only the targeted section, without necessarily affecting the ranking of the rest of the site. However, repeated abuse could have broader impacts.
