Google's Surgical Strike on Reputation Abuse article by Dr. Peter J. Meyers discusses the March 2024 Spam Update by Google. Google introduced a new spam factor, "Site reputation abuse", targeting a May 5 rollout. The update aims to address websites hosting low-quality content from third parties to capitalize on the hosting site's strong reputation.
By May 8, Google started taking action against reputation abuse. The ten sites that lost the most visibility between May 5 and May 8 were mostly coupon or discount code subdomains. These losses were also observed in other English-language markets, including the UK, Australia, and Canada.
The data suggests that not only subdomains but also main sections of sites were penalized. For instance, pages housing third-party discount codes in other sections of a site were also penalized. While retail coupon codes were the most visible victims, gambling-related and payday loan affiliate content were also affected.
The article raises questions about the fairness and helpfulness of this penalty. While these sites were using their authority to rank low-relevance content, the sites replacing them may not be of higher quality. However, the author suggests that Google's action was necessary given the widespread abuse of site reputation. The penalties were severe, wiping out impacted content, indicating that SEOs should take Google's new guidelines seriously.
