Who’s Winning After Google’s Site Reputation Abuse Policy Change and Publishers Reviews Drops

[Updated: November 25th, 2024]

Five days ago Google Updated its Site reputation Abuse Policy making it clear that using third-party content on a site in an attempt to exploit the site’s ranking signals is a violation of this policy — regardless of whether there is first-party involvement or oversight of the content.

What was changed?

When comparing the changes in Google’s “Site reputation abuse” spam policy wording you can clearly see how now is all about the “purpose” of the content and how it’s aligned to the site’s main goal, independently of how it was created.

From what I see with this change in policy, if a publication argues that the content they feature in some of these areas is not about manipulation, but just that their brand topic scope has “expanded” well beyond from what they had initially covered when starting out, in order to comply with this now, they are pretty much pushed to “split” in completely independent Web properties to stop taking advantage of the “authority” of the original one.

Let’s see how many of the publications affected end up doing this. My guess is a very small number.

What sites have been affected so far and Who’s winning instead?

A new round of the review areas of well known publications started to drop drastically in Google organic search results coinciding with this change of policy, and covered by Barry and Glenn here, some sites also started to receive manual actions notifications for “Site Reputation Abuse”.

Let’s go through some of the review sections of major publications that have drastically dropped in the last few days after the announcement, the topics for which they’ve dropped, and the websites that are now attracting attracting this traffic instead.

Forbes Advisor Section

One of the best known publications with a prominent financial advise section that dropped, was Forbes Advisor, that although we can see -by using tools like Ahrefs as I did in this case-, it had been already decreasing in organic search traffic and ranked keywords in the last few months, drastically dropped since a few days ago:

When analyzing the top 2.5K dropped or lost keywords in the last week by the Forbes Advisor directory, we can see how a high share of them have to do with currency exchange terms, CD rates, tax brackets, insurance, and mortgage rates.

The top sites getting more organic search traffic for this group of keywords are specialized financial sites like: XE (ranking well for conversions queries), Nerdwallet (credit cards, cost of living, tax brackets), Wise (conversions terms), Bankrate, Investopedia, along with a few exceptions: Reddit (ranking particularly well for credit cards and insurance terms) and the IRS official site (the tax office in the US, ranking for tax related terms).

For example, in the case of “Best CD Rates”, both Forbes and Investopedia dropped from the top 10, while Nerdwallet, Bank of America and Bankrate improved, and another publisher started to rank: Business Insider with a Guide from their Personal Finance section.

USA Today “Reviewed” Section

Another site that had been dropping in organic search traffic and rankings in this case, since a year ago, is the USA Today Reviewed section (located in a subdomain) featuring guides for every day products like appliances or gear, that decreased even more prominently in the last few days:

In this case, the most popular queries for which the section dropped in the last week were those of product brand related terms for which it was ranking like playstation portal, Kurt Geiger, Thrive Market, Cider Clothing, Shrek Crocs; as well as non-branded product terms such as best top load washer, electric snow shovel, portable tire inflator, among others.

The sites now ranking in top positions attracting most of the traffic for these queries are Reddit (ranking for a variety of top brand queries such as “playstation portal” or “cider clothing”, as well as non-branded ones such as “best refrigerator 3034”), as well as other UGC platforms like Youtube, Instagram, top retailers like Amazon and Target, and the brand sites of the products like Thrive Market, Playstation.com, Kurt Geiger, Apple. The other prominent publication that is still attracting traffic from these terms is the NYTimes thanks to the Wirecutter guides, still ranking for terms like “best dishwasher” or “best refrigerator”.

Newsweek Vault Section

In the case of the Newsweek Vault section, focused on reviewing financial services and products, it had been increasing in organic search traffic and rankings in the last year and had an extreme drop in the last few days:

Among the top terms for which the Vault dropped in the last week we can see many credit card, mortgage rate, and insurance terms, like: “home depot credit card”, “mortgage rates today”, or “spot pet insurance”.

The sites now ranking in top positions and attracting organic search traffic from these terms are the financial brands directly like the Citi Bank or Capital One sites; or financial specialized sites like Bankrate or Nerdwallet, as well as the product retailers like Homedepot, or Best Buy.

Finally, we can see Reddit here again as one of the most prominent players, ranking for a variety of terms like best buy credit card, tjmaxx credit card, home depot credit card, best pet insurance, tj maxx credit card, high risk merchant account at highriskpay.com, tjx credit card, bmo alto, carshield reviews.

For example, for “Home depot credit card”, the Newsweek Vault page dropped, along with a Forbes guide, and a landing page from Citi, while Reddit improved, and Wallethub started ranking.

Independent.co.uk Advisor Section

One of the UK targeted publications with a review section that dropped was the one of the Independent Advisor section, featuring reviews for a variety of products such as solar panels, broadband, VPN, insurance, home security, among others. The Advisor directory organic search traffic and rankings have had fluctuations in the last year, with ups and downs, although nothing like the drop that it’s going through in the last few days.

The top terms for which the advisor section has dropped in the last week in the UK are those related to car insurance, broadband deals, and VPNs, like: “car insurance”, “broadband deals”, “free vpn”, “broadband comparison”, “darwin insurance”, “flow insurance”, among others.

The sites now ranking in top positions for this group of queries and attracting a high share of their organic search traffic are specialized comparison sites like gocompare, money supermarket, compare the market, Uswitch, as well as the brands, like Aviva, Admiral, Express VPN or BT and UK government sites like gov.uk. We can see again in this list Reddit, although not as prominent as for the sites analyzed before for the US market.

The Sun UK Shopping Section

Another UK publication with a review section with an important drop in the last few days is The Sun “Shopping”, featuring fashion, beauty, technology, home and garden among other product types. This section had gone through an important drop in organic search rankings and traffic a year ago, although it had recently recovered, to drop again and further in the last few days.

The top dropped terms in the last few days in this case are product related ones, non-branded like “best air fryer”, “dehumidifier uk”, “best mattress” as well as product names such as “loop earplugs”, “remarkable 2”, “cadbury“, “bubble skincare”, among others.

The sites now ranking in top positions attracting most of the organic search traffic for these terms are retailers like amazon.co.uk, boots.com, as well as the brand sites like Ugg, loop earplugs, Stanley Cup.

As happens in the US with the NYTimes’ Wirecutter, in this case we can also see other publications review sites that are still ranking well, like The Telegraph “Recommended” Section, or The Independent’s “Extras”, that hasn’t dropped as the advisor section.

The Reputation Policy Change Hasn’t Affected to all Publications’ Reviews Sections

As we’ve seen, the reality is not all publications “reviews sections” have been affected. To highlight one, here’s the organic search traffic and rankings trend from the NYTimes Wirecutter, one of those that have actually seen an increase in organic search traffic in the last few days based on Ahrefs data. In fact, the’ve improved their rankings for some of the most popular Black Friday Deals related queries:

It would be great to understand the reason behind this; the difference between the winning publication reviews players vs the losing ones; since it’s not clear -to me at least- from the policy change.

TL;DR

As an outcome of the analysis, it was identified that:

• Not all publishers reviews section have had rankings drops: Although Forbes Advisor, USA Today “Reviewed”, Newsweek Vault, The Sun UK Shopping, have drastically decrease in rankings in recent days, The NYTimes Wirecutter or The Telegraph “Recommended” section have had no or minor rankings changes in comparison.
• Most of the sites now ranking instead of the publishers reviews that have dropped are specialized reviews or comparison sites:
  • Nerdwallet or Bankrate in the US; gocompare or money supermarket in the US;
  • Online retailers like Amazon or Target
  • The brand websites like Apple, or Stanley
  • Government sites like the IRS or Gov.uk
  • UGC sites, especially Reddit, followed by YouTube, Instagram or Quora; more in the US than in the UK

I’ll continue analyzing more changes of this and other Google Updates over here! Subscribe to the SEOFOMO newsletter and keep an eye open to the SEOFOMO News Community to get the analysis.