massive google update running

**wonderpunter** · 5 March 2024, 2:42 pm

looks like this one has HCU baked in and will hit parasite seo, aged domain, and scaled content spam https://searchengineland.com/google-...updates-438144

**allfreechips** · 5 March 2024, 3:20 pm

Lets hope the stated goals are correct in the article

**universal4** · 5 March 2024, 3:57 pm

Agree, if they can get closer to what their stated goals are I think many will see better results and those that have been trying to automate their processes will need to take a closer look.

Whether this will take care of the parasite seo issue that may take a bit of time to determine.

Rick
Universal4

**wonderpunter** · 5 March 2024, 4:09 pm

Originally Posted by universal4

Agree, if they can get closer to what their stated goals are I think many will see better results and those that have been trying to automate their processes will need to take a closer look.

Whether this will take care of the parasite seo issue that may take a bit of time to determine.

Rick
Universal4

I almost went down the AI route myself as it was pretty succesful, instead used this downtime building nw things and improving old so hopefully it pays off

**baldidiot** · 5 March 2024, 4:12 pm

Originally Posted by universal4

Agree, if they can get closer to what their stated goals are I think many will see better results and those that have been trying to automate their processes will need to take a closer look.

Whether this will take care of the parasite seo issue that may take a bit of time to determine.

Rick
Universal4

They’ve given a two month warning for the parasite seo update, see: https://developers.google.com/search...-spam-policies

**universal4** · 5 March 2024, 4:22 pm

Originally Posted by baldidiot

They’ve given a two month warning for the parasite seo update, see: https://developers.google.com/search...-spam-policies

Yea saw that and it made me wonder, are they looking for those selling all those "guest posts" on unrelated sites to dump them or are they suggesting there are ways to make it relevant?

Seems like this statement needs a little more clarification.

“Many publications host advertising content that is intended for their regular readers, rather than to primarily manipulate Search rankings. Sometimes called ‘native advertising’ or ‘advertorial,’ this kind of content typically wouldn’t confuse regular readers of the publication when they find it on the publisher’s site directly or when arriving at it from Google’s search results.”

And it seems they are not indicating, is the site that buys such posts getting dinged, the site that sells such posts, or both? (it appears they imply the site that makes such purchases may lose out, or at least that such posts will not provide the ranking signal they once did)

Rick
Universal4

**casionmark** · 5 March 2024, 4:42 pm

I actually read this as they are allowing advertorial provided it is of a high quality. Ie where gambling .com, catena etc are building content on big media sites / newspapers they will allow that to rank. It reaffirms that topical relevance is not a pre requisite if you have enough authority. Still, worst examples of parasite seo will get dropped.

**baldidiot** · 5 March 2024, 5:18 pm

Originally Posted by casionmark

I actually read this as they are allowing advertorial provided it is of a high quality. Ie where gambling .com, catena etc are building content on big media sites / newspapers they will allow that to rank. It reaffirms that topical relevance is not a pre requisite if you have enough authority. Still, worst examples of parasite seo will get dropped.

There’s some examples here: https://developers.google.com/search...ite-reputation

It sounds like the whole gambling sections on newspapers would be ok based on this and it’s more the outlook India stuff that they’re going to be targeting (in May).

**vamius** · 5 March 2024, 5:54 pm

This could really be a massive update because Google is over-spammed with AI-generated content built on expired domains. In that blog post, they even mention casino affiliate sites as an example multiple times. Expired domain abuse can be discovered easily, but I still don't think they will have an effective way to discover AI content and purchased links through guest posts.

Did anyone find info if this will affect only English-speaking websites (on google.com) or local sites too, for example german sites on google.de?

**casionmark** · 6 March 2024, 1:10 am

This is allowed:

Third-party content (for example, "advertorial" or "native advertising" type pages) that's produced with close involvement of the host site, where the purpose is to share content directly to readers (such as through promotion within the publication itself), rather than hosting the content to manipulate search rankings

Looks to me like a green light for newspapers to start selling advertorial as long as the content is of sufficiently high standard and looks like it is written for their readership. Which is obviously their expertise.

Worst example of parasite SEO where the guest posts bears no obvious topical relationship to the domain won't be allowed, but big media sites can easily work within those guidelines.

**wonderpunter** · 6 March 2024, 2:12 am

Originally Posted by casionmark

This is allowed:

Third-party content (for example, "advertorial" or "native advertising" type pages) that's produced with close involvement of the host site, where the purpose is to share content directly to readers (such as through promotion within the publication itself), rather than hosting the content to manipulate search rankings

Looks to me like a green light for newspapers to start selling advertorial as long as the content is of sufficiently high standard and looks like it is written for their readership. Which is obviously their expertise.

Worst example of parasite SEO where the guest posts bears no obvious topical relationship to the domain won't be allowed, but big media sites can easily work within those guidelines.

Yup some already do, add an author and logo and voila .. it"s still gaming the system and they are allwoing it but results can´t get any worse so i have hope

**casionmark** · 6 March 2024, 2:29 am

First time it's been stated in black and white on a google post though - literally, we will allow you to buy your way into SERPs on the back of a high authority newspaper domain.

**wonderpunter** · 6 March 2024, 2:49 am

Originally Posted by casionmark

First time it's been stated in black and white on a google post though - literally, we will allow you to buy your way into SERPs on the back of a high authority newspaper domain.

as long as its been fact checked and has your logo and the words in conjucntion with lol.. still, it shows that you can rank anything if you have domain power

**newcustomeroffer** · 6 March 2024, 3:04 am

Originally Posted by wonderpunter

as long as its been fact checked and has your logo and the words in conjucntion with lol.. still, it shows that you can rank anything if you have domain power

Yep, I dare say it will be a case of stick the word 'advertorial' or similiar in 6 point text that doesn't blend too badly with the background colour and it's business as usual

**baldidiot** · 6 March 2024, 4:24 am

Originally Posted by casionmark

This is allowed:

Third-party content (for example, "advertorial" or "native advertising" type pages) that's produced with close involvement of the host site, where the purpose is to share content directly to readers (such as through promotion within the publication itself), rather than hosting the content to manipulate search rankings

Looks to me like a green light for newspapers to start selling advertorial as long as the content is of sufficiently high standard and looks like it is written for their readership. Which is obviously their expertise.

Worst example of parasite SEO where the guest posts bears no obvious topical relationship to the domain won't be allowed, but big media sites can easily work within those guidelines.

Yeah it does sound like they're OK with the better collective / telegraph type pair up. Which, to be fair, is a bit different to a site just hosting random articles targeting high value search terms.

Having said that.. the language here is interesting because it's specifically referencing advertorials which google have talked about for over 10 years as not being the same as editorial content. Are they going to say that this content has to be identified as an advertorial... and therefore treated differently?

This is from a matt cutts video from 2013 talking about advertorials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sml...eSearchCentral

A lot of it is about passing page rank (ie: advertorials for links rather than parasite seo), but the key bit that's relevant to what's going on at the moment is this:

The Google News team recently published on their blog and said that, if you don’t provide adequate disclosure of paid content, whether it be native advertising, advertorials, whatever, whenever there’s money changing hands, if users don’t realize that sufficiently, because there’s not adequate disclosure, the Google News team mentioned that they might not only remove the paid content, but we’re willing to go up to and including removing the publication from Google News.

Obviously he's talking about google news specifically there, not the regular serps.

So in theory this two month notice could be to give the papers time to respond and to either:

1. Remove parasite seo articles
2. Mark paid collaborations as advertorials

This is largely wishful thinking on their part and, whilst it sounds good in theory, I doubt everyone is going to play ball. But it'll be interesting to see what happens in a couple of months.

**Jens Frueh** · 6 March 2024, 5:36 am

"Sometimes, websites that have their own great content may also host low-quality content provided by third parties with the goal of capitalizing on the hosting site's strong reputation. For example, a third party might publish payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website to gain ranking benefits from the site. Such content ranking highly on Search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given website.

We’ll now consider very low-value, third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight of a website owner to be spam. We're publishing this policy two months in advance of enforcement on May 5, to give site owners time to make any needed changes" - source https://blog.google/products/search/...te-march-2024/ Site reputation abuse.

So is it mean that Outreach and guest posting will decreasing in future and became less significant part of SEO? Interesting your opinion,experts.
Thanks.

**bpmee** · 6 March 2024, 8:23 am

Everyone touched on most of my thoughts already. It appears they've drawn distinctions between different types of paid content:

1) Parasite SEO - Irrelevant articles relative to the domain's content will be considered "Site Reputation Abuse". Most of Outlook India is toast.

2) Expired Domains - Closely related to Parasite SEO, PBNs and low-quality content farms built on expired domains are now "Expired Domain Abuse". Though they've probably penalized this in the past, I still think this strategy could work if the new content closely matches the old content (makes it look like a redesign). Any sponsored posts would need to be highly relevant to the original content.

3) Advertorials/Paid Collaborations - Agree with others, this keeps Gambling dot com and Catena media partnerships alive. If the content is created "in close partnership with the publisher" (paraphrased) AND marked as such, they'll be fine. You can still rent top rankings with enough money.

4) Major Media Backlinks - If the links come from advertorials, eg. a Telegraph "Gambling Section" linking to a Catena site, I suspect they'll lose some weight.

However, if the link comes from a legitimate Telegraph news article written by a Telegraph author, they'll still pass the same benefits as before. These can still be earned or bought at low risk.

I share @baldidiot's skepticism about newspapers marking paid content. As with most Google initiatives, a small number will comply at first while a substantial majority carry on as normal. The intransigence will continue until the offenders are actually penalized or everyone simply ignores the directive, leaving Google to solve the problem another way.

**Oliver Cooper** · 6 March 2024, 2:58 pm

Only time will tell. Although things may still change

**universal4** · 6 March 2024, 3:58 pm

Originally Posted by bpmee

Everyone touched on most of my thoughts already. It appears they've drawn distinctions between different types of paid content:

I share @baldidiot's skepticism about newspapers marking paid content. As with most Google initiatives, a small number will comply at first while a substantial majority carry on as normal. The intransigence will continue until the offenders are actually penalized or everyone simply ignores the directive, leaving Google to solve the problem another way.

Agree, but let's stay hopeful that an example might be made of someone, one that has verifiable consequences. It could be the type of thing that shakes things up a little that more of the media or newspaper type sites will make some changes how their paid articles are listed.

Time may shake some of this out, or not.

Rick
Universal4

**universal4** · 6 March 2024, 4:02 pm

Originally Posted by Jens Frueh

So is it mean that Outreach and guest posting will decreasing in future and became less significant part of SEO? Interesting your opinion,experts.
Thanks.

In my opinion I don't think it means that guest posting will go away, however it might mean disclaimers might need to be added or they might need to be specifically marked as advertorials etc.

This may lead to being of lower value, if the link benefit is reduced, buying guest posts on sites will lower traffic etc may lead to rethinking the cost effectiveness ratio.

Rick
Universal4

Thread: massive google update running

LinkBack

Thread Tools

Search Thread

Display

massive google update running

The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to wonderpunter For This Useful Post:

The Following User Says Thank You to baldidiot For This Useful Post:

The Following User Says Thank You to casionmark For This Useful Post:

The Following User Says Thank You to newcustomeroffer For This Useful Post:

Posting Permissions