Google spam algorithm update 2024: What websites need to do before May 5th to not fall foul of ‘site reputation abuse’

TRAFCK SEO agency reveal what the Google spam update 2024 is targeting

Websites who host third-party, low-value content – primarily for ranking purposes – that lacks close oversight from the owner have until May 5th to “make any needed changes” or face falling foul of Google’s new spam guidelines, resulting in a decrease in website traffic.

Google’s goal is rid the search engine of unhelpful content and preserve the authenticity of reputable websites from bad actors.

Websites – including the Daily Mail for example https://discountcode.dailymail.co.uk/ – have been ‘renting out’ their subdomains or even subdirectories to third-parties – typically without oversight over the content.

But from May 5th, this will be classed as spam by Google.

Google analyst Gary Illyes said: “The only reason the owners of these micro-sites rent the sub-spaces is to manipulate search results.”

Google doesn’t want low-quality, unhelpful content to surface on its SERPs (search engine results pages) that is published for the sole purpose of manipulating search rankings.

Google wants to service content that helps users find real answers or solutions.

Google gave their first warning about hosting third party content on reputable domains in September 2023.

At the time, they said: “If you host third-party content on your main site or in your subdomains, understand that such content may be included in site-wide signals we generate, such as the helpfulness of content… we recommend that it should be blocked from being indexed by Google.”

Then on March 5, 2024, Google said: “Sometimes, websites that have their own great content may also host low-quality content provided by third parties with the goal of capitalizing on the hosting site’s strong reputation.

“For example, a third party might publish payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website to gain ranking benefits from the site.

“Such content ranking highly on Search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given website.”

Google added: “We’ll now consider very low-value, third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight of a website owner to be spam.

“We’re publishing this policy two months in advance of enforcement on May 5, to give site owners time to make any needed changes.”

Google gave a series of examples which include:

  1. An educational site hosting a page about reviews of payday loans written by a third-party that distributes the same page to other sites across the web, with the main purpose of manipulating search rankings.
  2. A medical site hosting a third-party page about “best casinos” that’s designed primarily to manipulate search rankings, with little to no involvement from the medical site.
  3. A movie review site hosting third-party pages about topics that would be confusing to users to find on a movie review site (such as “ways to buy followers on social media sites”, the “best fortune teller sites”, and the “best essay writing services”), where the purpose is to manipulate search rankings.
  4. A sports site hosting a page written by a third-party about “workout supplements reviews”, where the sports site’s editorial staff had little to no involvement in the content and the main purpose of hosting the page is to manipulate search rankings.
  5. A news site hosting coupons provided by a third-party with little to no oversight or involvement from the hosting site, and where the main purpose is to manipulate search rankings.

Google has been very clear if you’re hosting pages that violate this policy, they should be excluded from search indexing (no-indexed or blocked in the robots.txt file).

Google also gave examples that are not considered site reputation abuse:

  1. Wire service or press release service sites.
  2. News publications that have syndicated news content from other news publications.
  3. Sites designed to allow user-generated content, such as a forum website or comment sections.
  4. Columns, opinion pieces, articles, and other work of an editorial nature where there is close involvement or review by the host site.
  5. Third-party content (for example, “advertorial” or “native advertising” type pages) that’s produced with close involvement of the host site, where the purpose is to share content directly to readers (such as through promotion within the publication itself), rather than hosting the content to manipulate search rankings.
  6. Embedding third-party ad units throughout a page or using affiliate links throughout a page, with links treated appropriately.
  7. Coupons that are listed with close involvement of the hosting site.

Websites that fail to make the adequate changes could be heavily penalised on May 5th.

If you want to take the risk and try and integrate the third-party content with your website TRAFCK SEO agency can help. Contact us at hi@trafck.co.uk.