Google has updated its site reputation abuse policy to no longer say that first-party involvement or oversight of content is excluded from this policy when those sites use third-party content to exploit its search rankings. The site reputation abuse policy was announced as part of its large March 2024 core update several months ago.
“We’re making it clear that using third-party content on a site in an attempt to exploit the site’s ranking signals is a violation of this policy — regardless of whether there is first-party involvement or oversight of the content,” Chris Nelson on behalf of the Google Search Quality team wrote.
Updated policy. Google has updated its site reputation abuse policy, which is located over here, to now say:
“Site reputation abuse is the practice of publishing third-party pages on a site in an attempt to abuse search rankings by taking advantage of the host site’s ranking signals.”
Why the change. Google said since launching the policy, they have reviewed situations “varying degrees of first-party involvement, such as cooperation with white label services, licensing agreements, partial ownership agreements, and other complex business arrangements.” Google added that based on its “numerous cases” it determined that “no amount of first-party involvement alters the fundamental third-party nature of the content or the unfair, exploitative nature of attempting to take advantage of the host’s sites ranking signals.”
“We’ve heard very clearly from users that site reputation abuse – commonly referred to as “parasite SEO” – leads to a bad search experience for people, and today’s policy update helps to crack down on this behavior. Site owners that are found to be violating this policy will be notified in their Search Console account,” Chris Nelson, Google Search Quality told Search Engine Land.
Enforcement. This site reputation abuse policy is still enforced using manual actions, it is not yet algorithmic. Google said, “Site owners who receive a spam manual action will be notified through their registered Search Console account and can submit a reconsideration request.”
Google had to clarify this when the search company first began enforcement of this policy.
Google added, “it’s important to note that not all third-party content violates this policy.” To see Google’s spam policies page about what is and isn’t site reputation abuse.
Different content from main site. Google also reiterated that it has algorithms that may adjust the ranking of that content by not benefiting from the site-wide signals if it is independent or starkly different from the main content of the site. “By treating these areas as if they are standalone sites, it better ensures a level playing field, so that sub-sections of sites don’t get a ranking boost just because of the reputation of the main site,” Google added.
Google continued to write in its blog post to say:
“Our efforts to understand differences in sections of sites can lead to traffic changes if sub-sections no longer benefit from site-wide signals. This doesn’t mean that these sub-sections have somehow been demoted or are in violation of our spam policies. It simply means we’re measuring them independently, even if they are located within a site.” Oh, and just to be clear, this confirms again that Google does use site-wide signals, as Glenn Gabe documented incredibly well over here.
Why we care. Many SEO have been complaining about the harm and unfairness that comes from parasite SEO. With so many complaints about the quality of Search results lately, this may help with some of those complaints.
Sometimes this is called Parasite SEO in our industry but not everyone will agree with this policy change. In fact, I suspect many will not be happy with this more broad-reaching update to this spam policy.