Google issued a critical update to its Site Reputation Abuse policy on Tuesday, the culmination of a monthslong effort from the search platform to close a loophole that publishers had been using for years to generate passive affiliate revenue.
In the controversial SEO practice that Google is looking to end, publishers would allow third-party vendors to publish content—typically product recommendations with affiliate links—on their websites.
Because of the publishers’ strong search authority, these affiliate pages would get a boost in visibility and generate passive revenue, which the two companies would split.
For instance, a vendor called Forbes Marketplace (in which Forbes is a minority investor) creates financial content for CNN Underscored, the affiliate arm of CNN.
But the distinction between the two operations is practically invisible, leaving consumers unaware that the credit card reviews they are browsing on CNN Underscored are actually created by a third party. Some analysts pejoratively refer to the practice as “parasite SEO.”
In its original description of Site Reputation Abuse, which debuted in March, Google stipulated that the owner of a website had to have some involvement in producing the third-party content. If the publisher had a hand in the process, then there was no Site Reputation Abuse.
However, in the updated language from the new blog post, Google clarified that no level of publisher involvement in the process mitigates the violation. Going forward, any use of third-party content on a site to exploit the search authority of the publisher constitutes Site Reputation Abuse.
“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,” Chris Nelson, a senior staff analyst of search ranking at Google, told ADWEEK. “Today’s policy update helps to crack down on this behavior.”
Exceptions to the rule
Despite the new language, not all third-party content violates the new policy. For instance, wire services, sponsored content, and news syndications are among the variety of exceptions Google lists on its official spam policy forum.