An In-Depth Look At Google Spam Policies Updates And What Changed

Google has introduced two new sections to its spam policies: expired domain abuse and site reputation abuse. Additionally, it has overhauled an existing section previously known as spammy auto-generated content, now renamed to scaled content abuse.

Google defines expired domain abuse as the practice where an expired domain name is purchased and repurposed primarily to manipulate search rankings by hosting content that provides little to no value to users. This can involve tactics like redirecting pages from the expired domain to a new site to build authority or continuing to build a site on an expired domain to capitalize on its existing authority.

Site reputation abuse, also known as Parasite SEO or pSEO, is identified by Google as when third-party pages are published with little or no first-party oversight or involvement, with the purpose to manipulate search rankings by taking advantage of the first-party site's ranking signals. Examples include a sports site hosting unrelated third-party content about workout supplements or a news site hosting coupon pages with little to no oversight from the hosting site.

Scaled content abuse, previously known as spammy automatically generated content, is now defined more broadly by Google. It refers to the practice of generating many pages primarily to manipulate search rankings without helping users, regardless of the method used to create the content. This includes using AI tools to generate pages, scraping content, stitching content from different webpages without adding value, creating multiple sites to hide the scaled nature of the content, or creating pages with content that makes little sense but contains search keywords.

Google's site reputation abuse penalties are set to go into effect in May 2024. This gives publishers time to adjust their strategies, such as deciding whether to de-index pages that could violate this policy, end certain partnerships, or take other actions to comply with the updated policies.