Is Your Website Vulnerable to Site Reputation Abuse?

• On May 2nd: Google announced Site Reputation Abuse Policy update, giving website owners 2 months to prepare.
• On May 5th: The Policy officially went into effect, with Manual Actions (Reviews by Human Employees of Google) against websites violating the policy.
• Currently the policy is in effect.

Impact:

• There have already been manual actions taken against websites including de-indexing pages (removing from SERP) as well as reducing SEO effectiveness.
• Publishers, especially those relying on third-party content like coupons, have expressed concerns. As they don’t control this content directly.

What it means for you?

• If you own a website, it’s crucial to ensure third-party content aligns with your site’s purpose and offers value to users. (Relevance and Helpfulness)

Site Reputation Abuse Policy Explained Easily:

Site Reputation Abuse is like sneaking unrelated content onto a well-respected website to trick search engines. Here’s the basic Idea:

• Imagine a website about healthy recipes (Reputed)
• Someone secretly puts a page full of casino reviews (unrelated) on that website. To make casino reviews rank higher (Tricking Search Engines).
• Google wants to stop this as it confuses users and makes searches less Helpful.

How will someone secretly put a page full of casino reviews on that website?

There are quite a few ways of doing so which are unethical and can have serious consequences for website owner.

Here are couple of ways (not recommended):

• Hacking: This is complex and illegal. If hacker gets access to website’s Content Management System (CMS), they could potentially create unrelated page (Casino Reviews). However this is risky move with high chances of getting caught.
• Vulnerability Exploitation: Some websites, especially old ones may have weaknesses in their codes that could be exploited. This could involve finding a way to inject content without proper authorisation.
• Publishing unrelated content on your own website for any reason may be getting paid or your’s other website (unread) to make it rank using reputed one.

How to Prevent Unauthorised Changes?

• User Permissions: Only authorised users with proper permission can create or edit content.
• Content Moderation: Reviewing any new content before publishing.
• Regular Security Checks: Websites are scanned for vulnerabilities to prevent unauthorised access.

The best way for website owners is to be vigilant, maintain strong security measures as well as reviewing content regularly.