Google Cracking Down on Site Reputation Abuse

Whether you create the content or work with a third-party content provider, if pages are not related to your site’s core mission, you’re at risk.

“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.” — Google

If you’re using third-party content or outsourcing parts of your website, take note. In March, Google said they’re cracking down on such unrelated content — like affiliate marketing pages that are unrelated to site content. Now, they’re clarifying that it doesn’t matter whether you created the content or someone else created it for you.

So, if you’re a new site and you have a deal with a coupon company from a third party, that’s now a no-no.

“Since launching the policy, we’ve reviewed situations where there might be varying degrees of first-party involvement, such as cooperation with white-label services, licensing agreements, partial ownership agreements, and other complex business arrangements. Our…