Google has issued new clarification for its site reputation abuse policy, which was launched earlier this year. It targets “parasite SEO” practices where websites leverage established domains to manipulate search rankings through third-party content.
Chris Nelson from the Google Search Quality team states:
“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.”
Policy Clarification
The updated policy states that using third-party content to exploit a site’s ranking signals violates Google’s guidelines, regardless of first-party involvement or oversight.
This clarification comes after Google’s review of various business arrangements, including white-label services, licensing agreements, and partial ownership structures.
The updated policy language states:
“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.”
Policy Details
What’s A Violation?
Google outlines several examples of policy violations, including:
Educational sites hosting third-party payday loan reviews
Medical sites publishing unrelated content about casino reviews
Movie review sites featuring content about social media services
Sports websites hosting third-party supplement reviews without editorial oversight
News sites publishing coupon content from third parties without proper involvement
What’s Not A Violation?
Google acknowledges there’s a difference between abusive practices and legitimate third-party content.
Acceptable examples include:
Wire service and syndicated news content
User-generated content on forum websites
Editorial content with close host site involvement
Properly disclosed advertorial content
Standard advertising units and affiliate links
Background
Enforcement of the site reputation abuse policy began in May.