With more than 99,000 search queries every second, translating to 8.5 billion daily searches, Google is the world’s most popular search engine. To ensure it gives searchers the best information available on web, Google updates its policies and systems regularly.
The recent Google Algorithm update, which started rolling out on March 05, 2024, ended officially on May 05, 2024, leaving a new set of instructions for the webmasters in the form of Site Reputation Abuse.
As per this recent Google May 2024 update, it will use manual action and algorithms to fight site reputation abuse spam, like it has been doing for years.
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Google May 2024 Update: What is Site Reputation Abuse?
When a third-party website publishes its pages on a first-party website that is little or not connected with the former, it is considered site reputation abuse. The purpose of this activity is to manipulate search rankings by advancing the first party’s high ranking or authority.
The site reputation abuse can be done in the form of:
- Third-party pages
- Sponsored pages
- Advertising pages
- Partner pages
Site reputation abuse is also called Parasite SEO, and Google warned about releasing the update last November.
Is Third-party Hosting Spam?
Google doesn’t regard all third-party hosting as spam. It said, “only that which is hosted without close oversight and which is intended to manipulate Search rankings” violates this policy.
Examples of Site Reputation Abuse
Google also gave examples to explain site reputation abuse clearly. It said, there are many websites that host advertising content intended to target their regular readers and not manipulate search rankings. This type of content is called “native advertising or advertorial.” It will not confuse the readers when they find the content through Google search or directly on the publisher’s website.
Here are some other examples from help documentation on Google Core update:
– An education website hosting a page about reviews of payday loans. The page is written by a third-party who distributes this page to other websites, too with the intent to manipulate search rankings.
– A medical site hosting a page about casinos, which is not related to the primary nature of the host site.
What is Not Considered as Site Reputation Abuse?
– Press releases or wire service sites
– Sites that allow user-generated content. A forum or site with a comments section the right examples.
– News publications that syndicate news content from other news websites
Why Google Updates Its Algorithms?
The main reason behind Google SEO updates and core updates is to improve the quality of search results so that users find the exact service, product, or information they were looking for on the search engine.
Google’s latest algorithm update which was released from March-May 2024 focused on reducing spam by 40% across all the searches.
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FAQs on Site Reputation Abuse Policy
Here are the two Q&As added by Google:
What ranking signals does a website have?
Ans. As per Google, their core ranking systems mainly work at the page level. They use different signals to understand how to rank each page. There are also some site-wide signals considered by the ranking systems.
If a website has a coupon page or space, which is part of a collaboration with a third-party site. Is it spam?
Ans. If a website is actively involved in hosting coupons for their readers, they do not have to block the content from Google search.
