Site reputation abuse: Google’s anti-spam rule
It is the latest chapter in Google’s fight against spam and attempts to manipulate SERPs with abusive and manipulative practices. Site reputation abuse, in Italian “site reputation abuse,” is the policy by which the search engine is trying to curb practices known as parasite SEO, by which external content hosted on authoritative sites exploits their established reputation to gain positions in SERPs without offering real value to users. So let’s try to understand what is going on, why Google decided to intervene so quickly, and which sites were affected. But, above all, we will try to analyze whether Google’s real goal is to correct “only” the dynamics that have caused a general imbalance in traffic distribution or, instead, whether the intervention is not a sort of “temporary patch” on a broader problem: that of the “blind trust” placed in big brands that is freezing the growth possibilities for small publishers, as our previous analyses have also shown.
What is site reputation abuse, Google’s site reputation abuse
Site reputation abuse, officially translated into Italian as site reputation abuse, is a practice through which a site uses its authority in the eyes of Google to publish third-party pages, with the main purpose of manipulating search results.
This external content-such as sponsored, advertising, or partner-related pages-is generally disconnected from the core business of the host site and offers little value to users, but due to the credibility gained by the domain they still manage to rank better in SERPs.
A crackdown on parasite SEO
With the introduction of the legislation on the abuse of site reputation Google has decided to directly address practices known in the SEO world as parasite SEO, which consists of the publication of irrelevant content on authoritative sites for the sole purpose of improving ranking in search results.
Such practices include cases where a medical site hosts reviews on online casinos, or a news portal that devotes large sections to discount codes and affiliations unrelated to the thematic core of the headline.
The mechanism leverages the ranking power of the host site to “pull” content that would otherwise struggle to gain visibility in saturated areas. Without providing original or truly useful content to users, this content ends up violating the spirit and balance of SERPs.
To counter this practice, Google adopted this specific set of rules in May 2024 to limit manipulative approaches, and upon further evaluation felt the need to strengthen the rules in November 2024, clarifying that no level of oversight by the main site can be used to legitimize third-party content that does not respect the thematic relevance of the domain. With this move, Google has further reduced gray spaces, ensuring that established brands cannot abuse their power to manipulate search results.
However, experts such as Barry Schwartz have pointed out a critical issue in the very definition of the concept of parasite SEO: the distinction between abusive and legitimate supervised content is sometimes tenuous, and the SEO community has pointed out limitations and ambiguities that could lead to the penalization of honest but externally managed collaborations. Despite this, Google wanted to act to counter widespread abuses of brand trustworthiness in the ranking system.
What the rule against abuse of site reputation includes
Announced in the March 2024 antispam update and officially kicked off the following May, the policy on site reputation abuse is an important component of the antispam rules adopted by the search engine to improve the quality of results. This rule specifically aims to counter SERP manipulation through the use of third-party content , often published with little or no editorial control by the main domain. Google’s goal is to ensure that big brands do not abuse their authority , exploiting it to place content that is not relevant to their core business, without offering real value to users.
Google closely monitors these behaviors and detects violations based on very specific criteria. First of all, it focuses on the presence of external content such as sponsored, advertising or affiliate-related pages that have no correlation with the general and thematic context of the host domain. Google’s algorithm is able to identify these sections of sites that use their names to promote commercial content aimed solely at manipulating search engine rankings.
Another aspect that Google evaluates is the host site’s level of involvement in the publishing process. When a known domain rents out part of its space to third-party providers, as happens in so-called white-label agreements, without actually checking the quality and relevance of the content, real editorial involvement is excluded from Google’s policy. Abuse becomes evident when management is completely outsourced, leaving little margin of control to the site’s main publisher. Finally, the quality of the content is also carefully assessed : if it turns out to be repetitive, manipulated with forced keywords just to gain ranking, the site risks penalties, despite the apparent legitimacy of the section in question.
The sites most at risk of penalization are those that use their editorial sections to host content that violates the domain’s core business . When Google identifies a violation of site reputation abuse rules, the platform applies different penalties depending on the severity of the case. Manual actions occur when a team of human reviewers flags an abuse and alerts the site through Search Console, clearly notifying them in which specific part of the site the abuse occurred. Often, Google limits the penalty to the offending sections, i.e., subdomains or internal directories, which may see a drastic reduction in ranking or even be excluded from indexing. In cases where manual control does not intervene, algorithmic updates take care of it : the search engine has already introduced rules aimed at automatically reducing the visibility of content that violates policies, declassifying sites that systematically abuse reputation.
For sites that wish to recover from penalization, the procedure involves removing or de-indexing problematic content. Only then can the domain owner request a manual revisit through the Search Console. However, even if the request is successful, recovery of the original ranking may take time, as Google must properly re-index all the site content, process the changes, and remove the penalized pages from its cache.
Google’s action to improve the quality of results
Site reputation abuse is thus a clear violation of the search engine’s anti-spam policies and a response to the deteriorating quality of results, which has been noticed for some time now.
One of the most frequent problems Google has found is user satisfaction: people, seeing a site recognized in the top positions of Google, click assuming that the content meets high standards, but end up reading pages that do not meet their search intent. These behaviors not only undermine the user’s trust in Google’s search results, but also downgrade the effectiveness of the entire ranking system.
Site reputation abuse, in fact, is a natural extension of the anti-spam policies that Google had already initiated with the introduction of the Helpful Content System in late 2022, in which content quality and usefulness became central to algorithmic evaluations. In May 2024, Google initiated more specific action on site reputation abuse, strengthening its guidelines so as to block irrelevant external content or content hosted without strict editorial controls , to protect the quality of SERPs and improve the overall search experience.
Google wanted to curb the use of third-party content to manipulate rankings by exploiting the pre-existing authority of the domain that hosts it. This external content can take the form of sponsored or advertising pages, affiliate articles or tabs that have nothing to do with the site’s core business.
For example, while a medical site finds consistency in publishing medical articles, hosting reviews of casinos or quick loans undermines its credibility, as well as unfairly exploiting the trust Google places in that domain. Similarly, generalist information sites that host sections for coupons or discount codes run by outside vendors (white-label) use the trust derived from their name to distort user perception and unfairly scale search results for relevant terms.
Further crackdown to correct an overly open-ended rule
When the new policy against site reputation abuse was introduced in May 2024, some SEO experts felt it was too vague. The original rule stipulated that third-party content posted on established sites would be tolerated if it was supervised or produced in collaboration with the main site, but it created a gray area that allowed certain content to violate the spirit of the rule while still formally complying with its limits.
In light of these issues, in November 2024 Google updated the policy, clarifying that no oversight of the host site can justify publishing content that is not directly related to the domain’s core business . This update aims to target cases where collaborations or white-label agreements continued to leverage branding to improve visibility in terms of ranking, without offering added value or following a consistent subject line.
The new guidelines now allow Google to take stronger action even in previously accepted situations, such as those involving affiliate content or native advertising, where rules strictly related to site intent are not followed. This update is part of a broader process of strengthening anti-spam policies , which aims to safeguard the search engine from increasingly sophisticated attempts to manipulate rankings without offering real utility to the end user.
Google’s clarifications: what is an abuse of site reputation and which cases are not in violation
It is Google’s own official documentation that further clarifies what the areas of application of this set of rules are, with a mirror highlighting what are examples of practices that violate the policy against the abuse of site reputation and what are instead permissible situations.
The following examples (which are only a fraction of the cases) are considered abuses-and therefore punished:
- An educational site that hosts a page of salary advance loan reviews written by a third party that distributes the same page to other sites on the web, with the main purpose of manipulating search rankings.
- A medical site that hosts a third-party page on “best casinos” designed primarily to manipulate search rankings, with little or no involvement of the medical site.
- A movie review site that hosts third-party pages on topics that might confuse users (e.g., “ways to buy followers on social media sites,” the “best fortune-telling sites,” and the “best essay writing services”), the purpose of which is to manipulate rankings in search results.
- A sports site that hosts a page written by a third party on “workout supplement reviews,” where the sports site’s editorial staff has little or no involvement in the content and the main purpose of hosting the page is to manipulate search rankings.
- A news site that hosts coupons provided by a third party with little or no oversight or involvement by the hosting site, whose primary purpose is to manipulate search rankings.
To avoid penalties, sites hosting pages that violate these rules must exclude this third-party content from Search indexing using known methods, such as noindex or robots.txt file blocking rules.
Examples such as:
- News agency or press release sites.
- News publications that syndicated content from other news publications.
- Sites designed to allow user-generated content, such as a forum website or comment sections.
- Columns, opinion pieces, articles and other works of an editorial nature that involve close involvement or review by the host site.
- Third-party content (e.g., “advertorial” or “native advertising” type pages) produced with close involvement of the host site whose purpose is to share content directly with readers (e.g., through promotions within the publication itself), rather than hosting content to manipulate search rankings.
- Embedding of third-party advertising units through a page or use of affiliate links through a page, with links used appropriately.
- Coupons that are listed with close involvement of the hosting site.
Why is Google really taking action on site reputation abuse?
With the further crackdown on site reputation abuse practices, Google has clearly recognized the importance of preserving the integrity of SERPs by addressing the problem of so-called “trust abuse”.
This trust, which the search engine itself had largely granted to major brands, had led over the years to distort the ranking landscape, favoring sites that benefited excessively from their authority, even where content was inconsistent or unresponsive to users’ search intent. The comparison that emerged from the SEO community emphasizes both the positive side of these restrictions and the many critical aspects that make the policy not only strict, but at times ambiguous.
The abuse of trust and the need for more control
Google has been forced to take drastic action in the face of the increasing manipulation of SERPs and the abuse of the concept of trust that characterizes the relationship between big brands and the search engine. With the gradual introduction of signals related to experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (EEAT), Google sought to shift the center of gravity of the algorithm toward quality and authority results . However, the process has created distortions.
The central problem, which the intervention on site reputation abuse seems to be trying to correct, is the fact that many authoritative domains have begun to take advantage of this blind trust. Especially in recent times, Google almost automatically rewards any content posted on these sites, without distinguishing in depth the quality or real relevance to the end user. This situation led to abuse of the trust: content of little value, often published by third parties for purely commercial reasons, still obtained excellent rankings thanks to the domain authority.
With this crackdown, Google has therefore reinforced the concept of editorial control: it will no longer be sufficient for brands to justify the publication of external content through partnerships or light oversight. Any content will have to be genuinely useful and relevant to the site’s core business, to avoid compromising user experience and credibility in search results. The message is clear: bring order to the SERPs so that there is content that actually responds to user preferences.
The critical viewpoint: policy rigidity and perceived unfairness
Despite the presumably good intentions with which Google introduced site reputation abuse, there was no shortage of criticism from the SEO community . Some experts have pointed out that the rigid application of these new rules, especially starting in November 2024, risks penalizing even legitimate collaborations between sites and external providers that produce valuable content.
Among the leading critics, Lars Lofgren stood out for his open polemic against Google’s approach. Lofgren described the policy as “colossal stupidity”, arguing that the real issue should not be who makes the content, but whether that content is useful or not. According to Lofgren, many brands work with outside agencies to produce quality content in line with their editorial guidelines. However, the rule’s loose definition could indiscriminately target legitimate partners, who simply run blogs or sections of sites on behalf of large companies.
The central critical element, then, is ambiguity in the definitions and applications of the policy: the rigid distinction between in-house and outsourced content fails to account for the many gray areas that characterize the modern SEO landscape. Lofgren and other commentators have raised concerns that Google is not really taking action to provide greater transparency, but to protect its monopoly on the ranking system. This approach could also harm legitimate collaborations between sites and agencies that do not abuse the trust of the algorithm, but are still bound to be penalized.
An additional point raised by critics concerns the wind of rigidity that permeates the policy. According to many SEO specialists, Google should find a more flexible ground that allows it to distinguish between conscious manipulation and legitimate partnership, without hitting everything with the same intensity. Indeed, the current system of penalties related to site reputation abuse risks stifling even honest and collaborative practices that can enrich the user experience without compromising the integrity of the SERP .
The gray areas of collaborations and the necessary flexibility
In light of the many feedbacks gathered from the SEO community, some experts have suggested that Google could promote more flexibility in the application of the policy on site reputation abuse. While the underlying intentions are laudable – to counter the abuse of trust authority given to major brands – the fact remains that the current regulations do not make a sharp distinction between legitimate partnerships and conscious manipulation of SERPs.
It is often the case that prominent brands partner with outside agencies or groups that specialize in content management, entrusting them with maintaining corporate blogs or specific sections of the site. This kind of editorial partnership, which should be considered legitimate and not manipulative, risks being unfairly hit by Google’s penalties. Currently, the rule tends to treat any external element as potential abuse, neglecting the real relevance of the content to the end user.
One possible way forward would be to introduce a rating system that takes into account different levels of oversight: Google could distinguish between content produced by established publishing partners and content visibly designed to manipulate SERPs. In other words, a targeted revision of the policy could allow sites to benefit from virtuous partnerships without suffering indiscriminate penalties.
The current rigidity of the policy, lacking room for flexibility, may in fact lead to misjudgments that harm not only sites that actually abuse ranking mechanisms, but also those sites that are simply benefiting from transparent collaborations. In this regard, many experts suggest that a reform of the rule may be the next step to avoid further injustice and ensure a more balanced regulation that can protect the integrity of SERPs without sacrificing the legitimacy of editorial agreements between brands and external partners.
Site reputation abuse: an attempt to rebalance the system?
The site reputation abuse introduced by Google should not be analyzed merely as an anti-spam intervention, but reflects a broader issue rooted in theasymmetry of trust that the search engine has built over the years toward a few major brands.
These sites, which now dominate much of the SERPs, have become recipients of preferential treatment that has literally frozen out the competition. This is what we have been describing in these talking about modern SEO and introducing tools such as Traffic Share, which makes it clear how large and well-structured market niches always see the same established brands at the top, often for very long periods, regardless of the quality or consistency of the content published.
Blind faith in big brands and frozen SERPs
Over time, Google ended up getting lazy and, distracted also by other factors (AI development, emerging competitors, legal battles, and so on) essentially froze the SERPs, as mentioned: the search engine’s algorithm prioritized brand authority for ranking purposes, consequently granting automatic overconfidence to established brands and favoring their content in the SERPs regardless of real quality or relevance to users’ search intent.
This process, born with the aim of ensuring authority and reliability in the results, has therefore produced an unbalanced mechanism, which has “frozen” the top positions of many niche markets, making it difficult for emerging sites to gain spaces of visibility despite their valuable content.
We were able to verify this concretely: our surveys revealed a disturbing dynamic in which up to 85 percent of organic traffic is distributed among only three or four major players, leaving the remaining crumbs for everyone else. Detailed keywordanalysis uses tools that allow us to identify precisely how the top domains share this huge slice of traffic. Our study, which culminated with data on the 45.46 percent (average percentage of traffic a page gets when it ranks first in Google rankings for an entire cluster of keywords), further highlighted these anomalies: established brands not only gain apparent advantages from their trusted status, but also manage to extend that dominance even on niche keywords, sometimes not directly related to their core business.
To get a sense of what this means concretely, just think of how most searches on topics such as tourism or cooking are always dominated by a small number of sites. Booking, Tripadvisor, but also portals such as GialloZafferano or Cucchiaio D’Argento are consistently at the top, while not necessarily offering the best content available on certain circumscribed topics. This happens because Google continues to blindly reward the most popular brand , relying on its overall authority, even if certain pages or sections really fail to meet users’ search needs.
The effects of the rule: late correction or rebalancing the system?
The update on site reputation abuse thus comes as a late correction, but not without merit. Google seems to have clearly recognized the risks associated with a mechanism that gave too much freedom to big brands, especially in situations where content outside the main scope of the site was rewarded solely for its placement under an authoritative domain. The clampdown is thus aimed at restoring balance to SERPs, trying to curb those parasitic behaviors that exploit authority to manipulate rankings.
Although necessary, however, this move is perceived by many as a patch on an already irreparably tilted system : the removal of parasite SEO is certainly a good step forward in the fight against ranking abuse , but is it enough to end the distortion of SERPs? The problem, as already mentioned, lies not only in external or unrelated content, but in the very fixity of ranking, which essentially blocks competition between valuable content and mediocre content hosted on large domains.
Discontent with the quality of Google‘s current results , often deemed to be poorly relevant, is leading some to hope that new artificial intelligence-based technologies will deliver better results, with more precise and dynamic answers , capable of responding more consistently to the user’s search intent. As Google works to correct past problems, it will be interesting to see if it can counter the rise of new engines or will have to adapt radically in order not to lose ground to AI-based competitors such as SearchGPT.
For all of us who use SEOZoom and those who consistently rely on our analytical tools, it will be essential to monitor the impact these policies will have on SERPs in the coming months. Traffic Share, in particular, remains an essential tool for understanding where there are actual opportunities to climb the rankings, taking advantage of any holes created by the new rules. However, it remains to be seen how much space will actually be freed up for those who have so far struggled to emerge in SERPs congested by the dominance of a few.
Google’s “late corrections” should therefore not make us lower our guard: if the goal is to gain visibility in a landscape increasingly threatened by the authority of large players, it will be imperative to make the most of all data-driven opportunities, not only to chase a generic ranking, but to conquer entire keyword clusters. The data analysis offered by SEOZoom remains at the heart of optimized SEO strategy , and it is precisely with an integrated and continuous approach that one will be able to capitalize on the potential meritocratic openings of this new era (?) of Google.
