Google has updated its documentation regarding the expansion of its site reputation abuse policy, now including several frequently asked questions. These questions address various aspects of third-party content, including freelancers, affiliate content, content relocation, and noindexing.
Here are the questions:
Q&A
Third-party content is content created by a separate entity than the host site. Examples of separate entities include users of that site, freelancers, white-label services, content created by people not employed directly by the host site, and other examples listed in the site reputation policy.
No, having third-party content alone is not a violation of the site reputation abuse policy. It's only a violation if the content is being published in an attempt to abuse search rankings by taking advantage of the host site's ranking signals. Our policy page has examples of third-party content use that doesn't violate the policy.
No, while freelance content is third-party content, freelance content alone is not a violation of the site reputation abuse policy. It is only a violation if there is ALSO an attempt to abuse search rankings by taking advantage of the host site's ranking signals.
No, the policy is not about targeting affiliate content. The documentation about the policy notes that affiliate links marked appropriately aren't considered site reputation abuse.
This is when third-party content is being placed on an established site to take advantage of that site's ranking signals — which the site has earned primarily from its first party content — rather than placing the content on a separate site that lacks the same signals.
No. You still need to reply to the manual action in Search Console and explain that the content has been noindexed. We recommend doing this rather than letting the manual action remain against your site.
Maybe, but it depends on where you move it to: Moving content to a subdirectory or subdomain within the same site's domain name: This doesn't resolve the underlying issue and may be viewed as an attempt to circumvent our spam policy, which may lead to broader actions against a site in Google Search. Moving content to another established site: This will resolve the site reputation abuse issue for the site it was removed from, as the site reputation of that site is no longer being abused. However, it may introduce a site reputation abuse issue to the site the content is moved to if the established site has its own reputation and the third-party nature is unchanged. Moving content to a new domain: This is far less likely to be an issue if the new domain has no established reputation and you follow our spam policies. Remember if you move content, you need to also submit a reconsideration request to remove the manual action.
If you move content that received a manual action, you shouldn't redirect URLs from the old site to the new site, as this may introduce the site reputation abuse issue again.
If you link from the old site to the new site, make use of the nofollow attribute for those links on the old site.
