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A Nightmare on Affiliate Street – How Google is picking off sites one by one that are violating its ‘Site reputation abuse’ spam policy
Glenn Gabe covers some of the huge visibility drops for sites violating Google's 'Site reputation abuse' spam policy.
www.gsqi.com
Well, that’s pretty much what I’m seeing right now in the SERPs with larger-scale sites that are violating Google’s ‘Site reputation abuse’ spam policy. Their affiliate sections are getting obliterated one by one. And what’s super interesting is that it looks algorithmic and not via manual actions.
For example, a few weeks ago I reported that Forbes got hit hard. It ends up their advisor directory which holds a ton of affiliate content dropped heavily on September 25th. You can see the drop below. It’s not pretty. And from what I’m seeing and hearing, it’s algorithmic and NOT a manual action.
Forbes Advisor:
But here’s the deal. Forbes wasn’t alone. I have a large list of sites violating Google’s ‘Site reputation abuse’ policy and noticed some weird things with the August 2024 broad core update. I covered that in my “Core Update Notes” and then in my video podcast “SEO From The Front Lines“. And as part of checking those situations out, I noticed some large drops BEFORE the August core update. For example, both APNews Buyline and Time Stamped dropped heavily on July 18th(and eerily on the same day). I don’t know if those were manual actions or algorithmic, but they were two more prominent sites with large affiliate sections dropping heavily.
Also, Time Stamped first dropped heavily during the March 2024 core update and then more when APNews Buyline dropped in July. You can see the drops by directory below.
APNews Buyline:
Time Stamped:
And as the slasher movie progresses, more cast members are going down. For example, I shared the other day that Fortune Recommends dropped heavily on October 11th. As of yesterday, there has been a 67% drop in search visibility for that directory. Yep, a huge drop.
