Google's SearchLiaison has confirmed that Google's Site Reputation Abuse update began on Monday, May 6th, and that manual actions will now be followed by algorithmic actions in the future. Many sites on the web have removed web pages that could be seen as hosting third-party content for search engine ranking purposes.
Perform actions manually now and run algorithms later
SearchLiaison noted that the algorithmic portion of the Site Reputation Abuse Policy will be introduced soon, and that enforcement is currently entirely manual. A manual action is when a real person at Google personally reviews your site to determine if it should undergo a manual action. This usually means removal from the search index.
Abuse of site reputation
An old strategy that has recently been revived is for marketers to piggyback on another website to get their content ranked in search engines. The best way to describe this behavior is that the publisher is piggybacking on another publisher's her website.
Some novice marketers have given this practice an awkward name: parasite SEO. Parasitic SEO is not the appropriate name for this strategy, since parasites infect unwanted host organisms, but this approach to rankings is based on consensus and does not involve one site attacking another without permission. Not.
However, this is not a strategy for low-level affiliate marketers. This is also the practice of many big brands, especially credit cards and product reviews.
Google targets third-party content
This particular spam policy is aimed at sites that host third-party content where the host publisher has little connection to the content published on the site. However, hosting third-party content is not enough to be targeted as spam.
Google's official definition is:
“Site reputation abuse is when a third-party page is published with little or no first-party oversight or involvement, with the purpose of leveraging the first-party site’s ranking signals to These third-party pages include sponsored, advertising, partner, or other third-party pages that are typically independent of the host site's primary purpose. are created without close monitoring or involvement of the host site, and provide little value to the user.”
Google's SearchLiaison confirmed in a tweet that the policy went into effect today.
He tweeted:
“Starting later today. This policy started yesterday, but enforcement actually begins today.”
Some major brand sites have recently removed sections from their sites that featured product reviews without evidence that the reviewer actually worked with the product being reviewed. The review did not have original product photos, product measurements, or test results.
Read Google's guidelines for abusing your site's reputation.
Featured image by Shutterstock/Lets Design Studio