Google’s updated site reputation abuse policy attempts to tackle a growing issue in search: large, authoritative sites exploiting their domain strength to rank for content they don’t own or create.
While the policy is a step in the right direction, it doesn’t address the underlying systemic problems with Google’s algorithm that allow this abuse to thrive.
Understanding Google’s site reputation abuse policy
Google’s site reputation abuse policy was introduced in March 2024, but its announcement was overshadowed by a major core update that same month.
As a result, what should have been a pivotal moment for addressing search manipulation was relegated to a footnote.
At its core, the policy targets large, authoritative websites that leverage their domain strength to rank for content they didn’t create.
It’s designed to prevent these entities from acting as “hosts” for third-party content simply to exploit search rankings.
A clear example would be a high-authority business site hosting a “coupons” section populated entirely with third-party data.
Recently, Google expanded the policy’s scope to address even more scenarios.
In the updated guidelines, Google highlights its review of cases involving “varying degrees of first-party involvement,” citing examples such as:
Partnerships through white-label services.
Licensing agreements.
Partial ownership arrangements.
Other complex business models.
This makes it clear that Google isn’t just targeting programmatic third-party content abuse.
The policy now aims to curb extensive partnerships between authoritative sites and third-party content creators.
Some of these often involve deeply integrated collaboration, where external entities produce content explicitly to leverage the hosting site’s domain strength for higher rankings.
Dig deeper: Hosting third-party content: What Google says vs. the reality
Parasite SEO is a bigger issue than ever
These partnerships have become a significant challenge for Google to manage.
One of the most impactful SEO investigations this year was Lars Lofgren’s article, “Forbes Marketplace: The Parasite SEO Company Trying to Devour Its Host.”
The piece dives into Forbes Advisor’s parasite SEO program, developed in collaboration with Marketplace.co, and details the substantial traffic and revenue generated by the partnership.
Forbes Advisor alone was estimated to be making approximately $236 million annually from this strategy, according to Lofgren.
As Lofgren puts it:
This highlights the systemic problem with Google search.
Forbes Advisor is just one of the examples of parasite SEO programs that Lofgren investigates. If you want to go deeper, read his articles on other sites running similar programs.
LinkedIn is another prime example. Over the past few years, users have increasingly leveraged LinkedIn’s UGC platform to capitalize on its powerful domain authority, pushing their content to the top of search results.
For instance, as of this writing, the top-ranking result for “healthcare SEO” is not from a specialized expert site but a LinkedIn Pulse article.
If you dig in their query data, you’ll see a range of queries from business, adult topics, personal loans and more.
Clearly, LinkedIn isn’t the best source for all of these things, right?
The rise of programs designed to manipulate search results has likely pushed Google to introduce the site reputation abuse policy.
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The bigger problem
This brings me to why the policy isn’t enough. The core issue is that these sites should never rank in the first place.
Google’s algorithm simply isn’t strong enough to prevent this abuse consistently.
Instead, the policy acts as a fallback – something Google can use to address egregious cases after they’ve already caused damage.
This reactive approach turns into a never-ending game of whack-a-mole that’s nearly impossible to win.
Worse yet, Google can’t possibly catch every instance of this happening, especially on a smaller scale.
Time and again, I’ve seen large sites rank for topics outside their core business – simply because they’re, well, large sites.
Here’s an example to illustrate my point. Progressive has a blog called Lifelines, which primarily covers topics related to its core business – insurance, driving tips, traffic laws, etc.