Updated Google Spam Policy – ​​Repeated manipulation may result in you being removed from searches

Updated Google Spam Policy – ​​Repeated manipulation may result in you being removed from searches

Google has updated its documentation on its Spam guidelines. This latest spam policy update includes several changes that I thought were interesting enough to write about.

1. Search manipulation = spam

Google added this at the beginning of their document:

Updated Google Spam Policy – ​​Repeated manipulation may result in you being removed from searches

It’s no surprise that content designed to deceive users is spam, but this “or manipulating our search systems to rank high” part describes much of the content used today for that Web can be created.

2. Removed: Links are used to determine relevance

Well, that’s an interesting change in wording!

Updated Google Spam Policy – ​​Repeated manipulation may result in you being removed from searches

Now it’s possible that nothing has changed in the way Google uses links and it’s just a wording change made for brevity. I think things have however changed. Google may rely on it even more heavily Vector search Now we determine what content is likely to be relevant to a search query. The Advances in Machine Learning Architecture Announced in February 2024, the solution ensured that Google’s large language models have a huge context window and are able to efficiently process large amounts of text. I think this would allow more possibilities for the vector spaces that are also used in search by systems like RankBrain, DeepRank and RankEmbed BERT. Also, Version 0.6.0 of the API files shows the Ability to divide documents into blocksThis would also allow Google to use vector search instead of traditional PageRank-driven features to determine which parts of content are likely to be relevant.

3. Changes regarding the website’s reputational abuse will be clarified

Site reputation abuse is relatively new to Google’s spam policies. They distributed manual site reputation abuse actions to websites in early May 2024, including many websites with coupon domains operated by third parties. Google said that Algorithmic enforcement is coming – but hasn’t done anything yet.

  • You removed the part I marked in bold here: Such third-party sites include sponsored sites, promotional sites, partner sites, or other third-party sites, which are typically independent of the primary purpose of a host site or without close supervision or involvement of the host site. site were created. and provide little to no added value to users.
  • All of this has been added. (I bolded the part I thought was most interesting): “Close supervision or involvement occurs when the first-party hosting site directly produces or generates unique content (e.g., through employees working directly with the employed by first-party providers or by freelancers). work for first-party site employees). It does not involve collaboration with third-party services (such as “white label” or “turnkey”) that focus on redistributing content with the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings.
  • They changed this example for something that would NOT be considered abuse of site reputation: “Coupons listed with close involvement of the hosting site” was changed to “Coupons sourced directly from merchants and other companies that Serving consumers” changed.

My interpretation of these changes is that it is OK for a website like a newspaper site that issues coupons and has a coupon subdomain. However, if a news site contracts with a third party to do the work and host it on a subdomain of the newspaper, then this is site reputation abuse – exploiting the news site’s authority for ranking purposes.

4. Repeatedly violate the spam policy and you may be removed from searches

The policy bypassing section is aimed at website owners who constantly create content to manipulate rankings rather than meet the needs of their audience. The part I highlighted below has been added.

Updated Google Spam Policy – ​​Repeated manipulation may result in you being removed from searches

It sounds to me like this opens the door for Google to quietly and without warning remove websites or sections of websites from search if it repeatedly attempts to manipulate search results.

We may be in for some interesting times.

Want Latest Updates in Your Inbox?

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top