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Google Site Reputation Abuse Update

May 6, 2024 Confirmed
« All Google Updates

Google rolled out the manual actions for the site reputation abuse on May 6, 2024. Google said the update kicked off a day earlier on May 5, 2024, though it only started issuing manual actions to affected sites on May 6, 2024.

Google updated the site reputation abuse update policy on November 19, 2024, and continued issuing more sites with a manual action penalty. The algorithm component of the site reputation abuse update is expected to be released at a future date.

Google’s Official Announcement

Google announced the update in response to a post by Katie Berry on X (formerly Twitter).

Notably, Google did not publish a dedicated post on X to announce the start of this update. Google did not announce the update on its search status dashboard either. But they did issue a reminder on April 30, 2024.

Google published a blog post to announce the November 19, 2024, update to the site reputation abuse policy. 

November 2024 Site Reputation Abuse Update

What is the Site Reputation Abuse Update?

The site reputation abuse is a new addition to Google spam policies. It specifically targets sites hosting third-party content intended to manipulate search rankings. 

The site hosting the content is typically uninvolved in the content creation process and typically only publishes the content in exchange for financial compensation. 

The content is usually unhelpful, optimized for SEO, and intended to ride on the site’s reputation to rank and attract visitors from search results pages. 

Google originally announced the update when it released the March 2024 Spam Update on March 5, 2024. However, Google mentioned the update would go live on May 5, 2024 (two months later) to give site owners enough time to comply. 

On November 19, 2024, Google updated its site reputation abuse update policy, saying it would now affect all third-party content published to take advantage of a host site’s rankings. This differs from Google’s initial statement, which stated that third-party content is only considered spam when published without the editorial overview of the host site.

Google mentioned that this change was necessary because the host site’s involvement in the content creation process had little to no effect on the intent of the content, which is to take advantage of the host site’s rankings and manipulate search results pages. 

Google also clarified that it has its systems and methods for identifying which section of a site contains content that violates its site reputation abuse policy. This means Google will not rely on the host site’s assurance when confirming whether the content had any editorial oversight. 

It should be noted that the November 19, 2024, update to the site reputation abuse policy is part of the manual actions component of the site reputation abuse update. Google has yet to release the algorithmic component of the update as of that date. 

What Content is Considered Site Reputation Abuse?

Google describes third-party content as content created by freelancers, agencies, website users, and other people not directly employed by the publishing site. 

Such third-party content is only considered site reputation abuse when created to exploit the site’s rankings. In this case, the third-party creator wants to benefit from the rankings the publishing site earned from content created by its authors.

What Content is Not Considered Site Reputation Abuse?

Not every piece of content published on another site violates the site reputation abuse policy. Specifically, the content and sites listed below do not violate the policy:

  • Press release websites
  • The comment section of any website
  • News sites that syndicate news items from other news sites
  • News columns, articles, opinion pieces, and similar content
  • Sites that accept user-generated content, for example, forums
  • Ads and affiliate links that contain a sponsored link attribute
  • Coupons retrieved from merchants and businesses that sell directly to customers
  • Advertorials and native advertising style pages created to promote a product or service to a site’s audience rather than ranking on search results pages

What Are People Saying?

Barry Schwartz announced the search reputation abuse update on X and shared the manual actions penalty from Google Search Console dashboard of an affected site.

In another post, Barry mentioned that several major news agencies had been affected by the update, with entire sections of their sites deindexed from search results pages. 

In response, Google Search Liaison clarified that the update is a manual action and not an algorithm update. However, Google Search Liaison revealed that an algorithm update would be released sometime down the road. 

Glenn Gabe also shared some insights on X and confirmed that Google had deindexed entire subdomains and subdirectories of highly authoritative news sites. 

In another post, Glenn mentioned that sites affected by the update had suffered a drop in traffic since the fall of 2023 (between September and December 2023). He added that some of the sites were also partly affected during the initial March 2023 update. 

The chatter on X heated up after Google updated the site reputation abuse policy on November 19, 2024. This time, Google considers all third-party content to be spam even if it is published with oversight from the host site.

Glenn Gabe reported that the subfolders and subdomains of multiple top sites, including CNN Underscored, WSJ Buyside, and Forbes Advisor, had been affected. Forbes was extensively hit by this update and even stopped ranking for the keyword “Forbes Advisor.”

Glenn also shared several images showing how WSJ Buyside and Men’s Journal had been removed and deindexed from search results pages. 

Glenn Gabe published the analytic report of a site that lost traffic to the November 2024 Core Update that was ongoing when the site reputation abuse policy was updated before losing more traffic to the site reputation abuse update that followed a few days later.

Lily Ray mentioned that Google updated the site reputation abuse days before Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the largest shopping days in the US. Black Friday was just 10 days away when the update was released on November 19, 2024.

She also posted the analytics reports of Forbes Advisor, which was deindexed from search results pages. Interestingly, Forbes Advisor briefly recovered its rankings on November 19, 2024, before losing it on November 20, 2024. 

Lily Ray suggested that more helpful content would now rank for the keywords sites affected by the site reputation abuse update previously ranked for. She added that Quora and Reddit would greatly benefit from it. Reddit had even begun ranking for keywords that had previously been ranked by Forbes Advisor. 

Lily Ray also suggested that Google may have found sites that violated the site reputation abuse policy by analyzing the bio of their authors. Google then visits the other sites they wrote for and hits them with a manual action penalty. 

Gagan Ghotra suggested that some sites were hit more than others. He mentioned that Forbes was severely affected by the May 6 and November 19 site reputation abuse update, while some sites still ranked. 

Lily Ray noticed a similar trend, saying that some sites that violated the policy still ranked on search results pages. She, however, suggested that Google would soon issue them a manual action penalty or other sites would begin reporting their rivals to Google. 

What’s Next – Dealing With This Update

Affected sites have received manual action notifications in their Google Search Console. So, you should monitor your Google Search Console dashboard if such a notification pops up. If it does, then follow the guidelines below to resolve it. 

What Not to Do:

Some bloggers may try to move the content around. However, that will not solve the issue. If you move the content to a site with an established reputation, then the new site will be hit with a site reputation abuse penalty. 

If you move the content to a new subdirectory or subdomain, then Google may take more expansive action against the domain as it considers it an attempt to bypass its spam policies. 

What to Do:

You can resolve the site reputation abuse penalty by:

  • Deleting the affected content 
  • Setting the affected content to noindex
  • Moving the affected content to a new or existing site with no established reputation. 

If you move the content to a new or existing site without an established reputation, do not set up redirects that send visitors from the old site to the new one. Whenever you link from the old to the new site, ensure to include the nofollow tag. 

Once done, file a reconsideration request and tell Google what you did to ensure your site no longer violates the spam reputation abuse policy. 

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