Google Strengthens Crackdown on Site Reputation Abuse

Picture of Julie Blankenship

Julie Blankenship

Is editor at rank1pro.com, has a decade of writing experience. With a strong background in Digital Marketing and PR Agencies.

See Full Bio
  • News Last Updated November 20, 2024

Google has taken a new move against “parasite SEO” by updating comprehensively its site reputation abuse policy launched earlier this year. Parasite SEO involves practices where domains use their authority to manipulate search rankings through the content of third parties.

Chris Nelson, from Google’s Search Quality team, added, “Users have complained about site reputation abuse that leads to not-so-great search experiences. Today’s update reinforces our commitment to solving the issue.“

What Is Site Reputation Abuse?

The policy defines site reputation abuse as publishing third-party content on a host site to exploit its ranking signals. The updated guidelines make it clear that this behavior is a violation, irrespective of the host site’s involvement or oversight.

Examples of Violations

Google has outlined specific cases that constitute site reputation abuse, including:

  • Educational sites hosting payday loan reviews
  • Medical sites publishing casino-related content
  • Movie review platforms posting unrelated social media service promotions
  • News websites featuring third-party coupon pages

Legitimate Practices Remain Protected

In contrast, Google recognizes acceptable practices such as:

  • Syndicated news and wire service content
  • User-generated forum content
  • Editorially curated and disclosed advertorial material

Enforcement Actions and Industry Impact

Google has started implementing the policy since May, by sending some manual actions to major high-profile sites like CNN and USA Today for hosting promotional third-party content. Sites that remove their offending materials or add “noindex” tags have been shown to recover but the process of ranking reappearance is slow.

Industry analyst Glenn Gabe said, “Sites removing non-compliant content have shown recovery signs, but it takes time for Google crawlers to process these updates.“

Future Automation Plans

While the practice currently requires manual enforcement, Google is planning to enforce algorithmic updates regarding abusive practices and automatically penalize them. There is no announced timeline for this.

Notifications and Reconsideration

Since the violation can be detected using Search Console, site owners are allowed to correct errors and file reconsideration requests.

This policy update shows Google would not drop its guard from maintaining search quality and fighting manipulative practices, thus keeping a genuine experience for users.