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{weekly discussion} Google updated Spam Policy Guide: Site Reputation Abuse, Scaled Content, Coupons – Sept 25th
- Do these changes help SEOs and Users, Site owners?
- Does this clarify the details about AI content and scaled websites?
- What does this change for you?
According to the Google Developer blog, they've updated their spam policy Guide.
What: Clarified some wording in our spam policies for Google web search to focus more on what web spam is and the tactics involved. Also integrated an explanation of close involvement from our blog post for easier reference, and clarified that trying to circumvent our policies can also result in ranking lower or not at all.
Why: We review and refresh our documentation periodically. This update is part of that process.
In Particular, t
Site reputation abuse
What ranking signals does a site have?
Our core ranking systems are primarily designed to work on the page level, using a variety of signals and systems to understand how to rank individual pages. We do have some site-wide signals that are also considered. Please note: some third-party services provide "reputation" or "authority" scores for sites. These don't correspond to any of Google's own signals nor come from Google.
My site has a coupon area that we produce in part by working with a third party. Is this considered spam?
Many publications host coupons for their readers. Readers should clearly understand how the publication sources its coupons and how it works to ensure that the coupons provide value to readers.
If the publication is actively involved in the production of the coupon area, there's no need to block this content from Google Search. Active or close involvement is when the hosting site is providing unique value to its readers by directly sourcing coupons from merchants and other businesses that serve consumers, not from white-label services that focus on redistributing coupons with the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings.
Scaled content abuse
Is this a change in how Google views AI content in terms of spam?
Our long-standing spam policy has been that use of automation, including generative AI, is spam if the primary purpose is manipulating ranking in Search results. The updated policy is in the same spirit of our previous policy and based on the same principle. It's been expanded to account for more sophisticated scaled content creation methods where it isn't always clear whether low quality content was created purely through automation.
What's different from the old policy against "automatically-generated content" and the updated policy against "scaled abuse"?
Our new policy is meant to help people focus more clearly on the idea that producing content at scale is abusive if done for the purpose of manipulating search rankings and that this applies whether automation or humans are involved.
https://developers.google.com/search/updates#spam-policy-clarifications
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies
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1 Reply
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Google’s updated spam policy states that reputation signals mainly work at the page level. To avoid being marked as spam, sites should actively manage their coupon content…
It also makes clear that automated or AI-generated content is considered spam if it’s meant to manipulate rankings.
SEOs and site owners need to prioritize quality content and transparency to meet these new guidelines…
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The part about AI content finally ends the discussion if AI content gets penalized or not. It doesn’t, but if you try to push 20k content pages into the index with your half-assed affiliate site, that’s considered spam, even if the content itself isn’t bad. It’s about the site overall and assumed intent.
The coupon thing is something Google already addressed multiple times. Huge, reputable publications created subdomains with cookie cutter price comparison sites and these ranked well, despite offering little value to users since they are just white labels. Classic reputation abuse.
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