Google begins enforcement of site reputation abuse policy with portions of sites being delisted

Google has started its enforcement of the new site reputation abuse policy by delisting portions of websites from the Google Search index. This seems to have launched in the past hour or so, where sites as large as CNN, USA Today, and LA Times are seeing their coupon directories no longer ranking for coupon-related keyword phrases.

We were expecting the enforcement to begin this week, we posted a reminder last week. Google told us this change was coming in March, when Google announced multiple search enhancements, which also included the March 2024 core update.

Google said today. Google’s Search Liaison said on X today, “It’ll be starting later today. While the policy began yesterday, the enforcement is really kicking off today.”

Examples of enforcement. Laura Chiocciora and Glenn Gabe posted screenshots of some sites that were impacted by this update. They include CNN, USA Today, and LA Times. These sites all did not block these directories from being indexed or ranked by Google and tonight found those sections removed from Google Search.

You're right. I'm seeing the same thing. USA Today, CNN, and LA Times are gone for "subway coupons" and other queries. Sure seems like the update is underway. :) First screenshot is now and second is as of yesterday. pic.twitter.com/f46B5h2ccP

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 6, 2024

Some other sites, like Forbes, Wall Street Journal and others manually blocked these directories from Google’s spiders before enforcement of this new policy began.

This is just a sampling of some of the enforcement.

Manual actions. We have not yet seen examples of manual actions, where Google issues manual penalties through Google Search Console. Those are expected to come as well. These specific actions above appear to be algorthmic.

What is site reputation abuse? When third-party sites host low-quality content provided by third parties to piggyback on the ranking power of those third-party websites. As Google told us in March:

• “A third party might publish payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website to gain ranking benefit from the site.”
• “Such content ranking highly in Search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given website.”

Under Google’s new policy, site reputation abuse is defined as “third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight of a website owner” and “intended to manipulate Search rankings” will be considered spam.

The new Google Search spam policies about reputation abuse was announced by Google over here and and the updated policies are over here.

But. Not all third-party content will be considered spam, as Google explained:

• “Many publications host advertising content that is intended for their regular readers, rather than to primarily manipulate Search rankings. Sometimes called ‘native advertising’ or ‘advertorial,’ this kind of content typically wouldn’t confuse regular readers of the publication when they find it on the publisher’s site directly or when arriving at it from Google’s search results.”

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.

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