“Updating our site reputation abuse policy” is how Google, in almost wondrously opaque fashion, announced yesterday that big changes have come to some big websites, especially those that rely on their domain authority to promote lucrative third-party product recommendations.
If you’ve searched for reviews and seen results that make you ask why so many old-fashioned news sites seem to be “reviewing” products lately—especially products outside that site’s expertise—that’s what Google is targeting.
“This is a tactic where third-party content is published on a host site in an attempt to take advantage of the host’s already-established ranking signals,” Google’s post on its Search Central blog reads. “The goal of this tactic is for the content to rank better than it could otherwise on a different site, and leads to a bad search experience for users.”
