If your site hosts content made by another company, such as a coupon section, a product review hub or a “partner” area, the site reputation abuse policy update needs your attention this week. On 19 November 2024, Google changed the policy so that first-party oversight no longer protects that content. If third-party pages are there to borrow your site’s ranking power, they break the rule, even if your own team reviews or approves them.
In this article, I explain what changed, why Google made the change, what still counts as fine, and how I would audit a site right now. I also cover the second part of the announcement that many people missed: how Google treats sections of a site that look very different from the rest of it.
What Changed in the Site Reputation Abuse Policy Update
Google first added site reputation abuse to its spam policies on 5 March 2024, with enforcement starting on 5 May 2024. I covered the original rule in my guide to Google’s policy on parasite SEO. Parasite SEO means placing pages on a strong, trusted website so they rank better than they would on their own site.
The first version of the policy described the problem as third-party pages published “with little or no first-party oversight or involvement.” That wording left a gap. Many publishers read it as: “If we review the content, or if we are involved in some way, we are safe.”
The update closes that gap. In its 19 November 2024 announcement, Google said that using third-party content to exploit a site’s ranking signals breaks the policy regardless of whether there is first-party involvement or oversight. The new definition now focuses on one thing: publishing third-party pages on a site to abuse search rankings by taking advantage of the host site’s ranking signals.
The Old Test vs the New Test
Here is the simplest way I can put the shift.
- Old question: Did the host site have close oversight of this third-party content?
- New question: Is this third-party content on the site mainly to take advantage of the site’s ranking signals?
Oversight used to work as a kind of defence. Now it is not part of the test at all. A publisher can review every page, put its own editors’ names on it and still be in breach if the setup exists to rank someone else’s content on the back of the host’s reputation.
Why Google Made This Change
Google explained that it reviewed many cases with different levels of first-party involvement. It named a few business setups directly:
- White-label services (another company produces the content and the host publishes it under its own brand)
- Licensing agreements
- Partial ownership deals
- Other complex business arrangements
Google’s conclusion was that none of these change the basic facts. The content is still third-party content, and the goal is still to use the host’s ranking signals. Some involvement from the host does not make that less exploitative.
In my view, this was the expected next step. Once the policy went live in May, many sites kept their third-party sections and simply pointed to their level of “oversight.” Google has now made it clear that this argument will not work.
Google also said it does not take a site’s claims about how content was produced at face value. It looks at many factors. So writing a long explanation of your editorial process will not, on its own, protect a section that exists for ranking reasons.
What Counts as Third-Party Content
Third-party content simply means content made by someone other than the site owner. That can include:
- A company running a coupon or deals section for you
- A content partner that writes product reviews under your brand
- A white-label provider that supplies articles in bulk
- Pages from a licensing or revenue-share deal
The important point is that third-party content is not a problem by itself. The policy only applies when that content is used to abuse the host site’s ranking signals. Google repeated this in the update and pointed to the examples in its spam policies documentation.
Examples That Fit the Policy
The spam policies page has listed clear cases since March 2024. They all share the same pattern: a strong site hosts pages that have nothing to do with why people trust it. For example:
- An educational site hosting third-party pages that review payday loans
- A medical site hosting third-party pages about the “best casinos”
- A news site hosting a coupon section supplied by a third party
When I look at a site, I ask one plain question: would a regular reader expect to find this content here? If the honest answer is no, and the content ranks mostly because of the domain, it is a risk.
Content That Is Usually Fine
Google has been clear that many normal publishing setups are not site reputation abuse. Based on its documentation, these are generally fine:
- Wire services and press releases published as they normally are
- Syndicated news from other news publications
- User-generated content, such as forums and comment sections
- Columns and opinion pieces from outside writers that fit your site’s normal editorial work
- Ads and affiliate links on your own pages, as long as the links are marked correctly
- Native advertising made to reach your own readers, not to rank in Google
The forum point matters because many people asked me whether Reddit-style content is now at risk. Google treats user-generated content differently. If you want to understand why forums rank so well right now, I wrote about why Reddit and forums show up in Google results.
The Second Part of the Update: Sections Treated as Standalone Sites
The same announcement included a separate point that I think is just as important for big publishers. Google said it has systems that check whether a section of a site is independent from, or very different from, the main site.
When those systems decide a section is separate, Google treats it like a standalone site. In practice, that section no longer gets the benefit of the main site’s site-wide signals. Site-wide signals are things Google measures across a whole domain, such as its overall reputation.
Google was careful to say this is not a demotion and not a policy violation. The section is just judged on its own merits. But the traffic result can look similar to a penalty, because the section loses the boost it had from the main domain.
This is why I would not treat “we have no manual action” as an all-clear. A section can lose a lot of traffic without any message in Search Console, simply because Google now judges it as its own site.
How Google Enforces Site Reputation Abuse
So far, Google has enforced this policy through manual actions. A manual action is a penalty applied by a human reviewer at Google, not by an algorithm. If your site gets one, you will see it in the Manual actions report in Search Console, and Google usually sends a message as well.
Google has said it plans to handle site reputation abuse with algorithms in the future too. That has not been announced as live yet. For now, the main risk is a reviewer finding a section that breaks the rule.
A manual action can be limited to the part of the site that breaks the rule, rather than the whole domain. Even so, it can wipe out the search traffic for that section, and that section may have been a big source of revenue.
If you do get a manual action, you can fix the issue and then send a reconsideration request from Search Console. That is a short written explanation of what you changed. Google reviews it and decides whether to lift the action.
How This Fits With the November 2024 Core Update
The timing can make diagnosis harder. Google started the November 2024 core update on 11 November, and it is still rolling out as I write this. I covered it in what we know about the November 2024 core update.
So if you see a drop this month, check the source before you react:
- Manual action present: it is a policy issue, so follow the fix steps below.
- Only one section dropped, no manual action: it may be the standalone-section systems.
- Broad changes across many pages: the core update is the more likely cause.
Who Should Worry About This Update
Most small business sites have nothing to fix. If you write your own content about your own products or services, this policy does not touch you.
The sites that should look closely are:
- News and magazine sites with coupon, deals or “best of” product sections run by a partner
- Large brand sites that rent out a subfolder or subdomain to another company
- University, health or government-linked sites that host commercial content for others
- Publishers with licensing or white-label deals for review content
- Sites that bought a third-party content package to “grow traffic fast” on a strong domain
On the other side, agencies and affiliates who sell placements on strong domains should also take note. This was the business model the policy was written to stop, and the update removes the main defence those deals relied on.
How to Audit Your Site After the Site Reputation Abuse Update
Here is the process I would follow this week. It works for a small publisher and for a large media group.
- List every section with outside involvement. Include coupons, deals, reviews, partner hubs, sponsored areas and any subfolder or subdomain managed by another company. Ask your commercial team too, because SEO teams often do not know about every deal.
- Check the Manual actions report in Search Console. Do this for every property, including subdomains. If you see a site reputation abuse action, that section is your first priority.
- Ask who made the content and why. For each section, note who writes it, who earns from it, and whether it would exist if Google did not send it traffic. That last question is the most honest test I know.
- Compare the section with your core topic. A cooking site with a kitchen gear review section is very different from a news site ranking for credit card or casino terms through a partner.
- Look at the traffic pattern. In the Search Console Performance report, filter by the section’s URL folder. A section that gets almost all its visits from search, with little use by your regular readers, is a warning sign.
- Decide what to do with each risky section. Your main options are to stop the deal, block the section from search, or bring the content fully in-house so it becomes genuinely first-party.
- Document your decisions. Keep a short record of what you changed and when. You will need it if you ever write a reconsideration request.
Your Options for a Risky Section
In its March 2024 guidance, Google said content that breaks this policy should be blocked from Google Search. The common way to do this is a noindex tag, a line of code that tells Google not to show the page in its results.
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">Other options include ending the partnership and removing the pages, or moving the content to the partner’s own website. If you already have a manual action, remember that fixing the pages is only half the job. You still need to send a reconsideration request to explain what you changed.
One thing I would avoid is trying to hide the section in a new place on the same domain, for example by moving it from a subfolder to a subdomain. Google’s spam policies already warn against trying to get around a policy, and this looks exactly like that.
Mistakes I See Sites Make With This Policy
Since May, I have seen the same few mistakes again and again. These are patterns, not single cases, and I expect them to keep coming up after this update.
- Relying on “we edit it” as protection. That defence is now gone. Editing third-party content does not make it first-party.
- Adding staff bylines to partner content. Changing the author name does not change who made the content or why it is there.
- Panicking about all outside writers. In my view, freelancers and guest columnists writing for your readers, on your normal topics, are not what this policy is about. Do not cut useful content out of fear.
- Ignoring subdomains. Many teams only check the main property in Search Console and miss problems on a subdomain run by a partner.
- Assuming a traffic drop is a penalty. It may be the standalone-section systems, or the core update. Check before you act.
What This Means for Your SEO Strategy
The bigger message is simple. Google wants each piece of content to rank because of what it is and who made it, not because of the domain it is placed on. This fits with the direction of the March 2024 core update and new spam policies, which also targeted expired domain abuse and scaled content abuse.
For most sites, I think this is good news. If you build content on your own topics, with your own expertise, you no longer have to compete with a big domain that rented out a folder to rank for your keywords.
For publishers, the business question is harder. Some partner sections made real money. My honest advice is to plan for a future where those sections only bring value if they serve your actual readers. If a section only works because of Google traffic to a borrowed domain, I would not build the business around it.
If you want new revenue from commercial content, I recommend bringing it in-house. Hire or train your own team, write about topics that fit your site, and show real experience with the products. That is slower, but it does not depend on a gap in Google’s rules.
Conclusion: Act on the Site Reputation Abuse Policy Update Now
The site reputation abuse policy update removes the “oversight” defence. If third-party pages sit on your site to borrow its ranking power, they break the policy, whatever your level of involvement. At the same time, Google may treat very different sections as standalone sites, which can lower their traffic without any penalty.
Your next step is the audit above: list every section with outside involvement, check Search Console for manual actions, and decide what to keep, block or bring in-house. For the full background on how the rule works, read the Google announcement alongside the examples in its spam policies.
