Google last year began cracking down on sites with strong search authority “abusing” their position by adding third-party commercial content such as an affiliate shopping arm or voucher code section.
However many legitimate publishers who had built up a strong affiliate and e-commerce revenue stream got caught up in the manual penalties being handed out, from Forbes, Fortune and CNN to AP News and the Wall Street Journal and many others.
The Association of Online Publishers has investigated the impact of the “site reputation abuse” policy and managing director Richard Reeves has written for Press Gazette outlining the findings.
When Google announced its site reputation abuse policy last year, the AOP’s recommendation was to pause its rollout until publishers had been consulted on its criteria and its impact on commercial revenues.
At the time, the policy barred third parties from running commercial pages on publisher websites with little or no oversight, to “piggyback” off the search reputation of the primary domain.
As enforcement was conducted through manual action and applied with no warning, we deemed it necessary to take a collaborative approach between Google and publishers to ensure there was a smooth transition towards acceptable practices. This did not occur. Since then, manual enforcement has continued without transparency and the definition of “third party” has been expanded to include freelancers.
Following a presentation to the AOP by Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan — which helpfully provided clarification on policy criteria and how enforcement decisions are made — we reached out to our members to respond to Google’s current action against site reputation abuse. All responses are anonymous and come from across major publishing groups in the UK.
In attempting to solve a legitimate issue, Google’s enforcement has overreached
As Nicola Agius, director of SEO and Discover at Reach, stated in her examination of Google’s policy, site reputation abuse is a legitimate user experience issue in search. An AOP member appreciated that the policy has provided a benchmark, with affiliate arms that escaped penalty acting as a minimum threshold that other publishers need to meet to succeed.
However, publishers shouldn’t have to rely on educated guesswork to make decisions that affect core commercial and editorial strategy. Without transparency and communication, publishers are left in the dark as to whether the ratio of freelance to in-house staff and output is being tracked, and how long this ratio needs to be established for Google to consider it business as normal, and thus not abuse.
There has been some inconsistency in enforcement and contradiction of the policy’s stated aims noted. One AOP member immediately cut ties with third-party coupon providers following the policy’s announcement and brought all functions entirely in-house. They still received a manual penalty and voucher traffic has never recovered. Even in-house, it appears vouchers are no longer a commercial opportunity publishers can explore.
With the definition of third party expanded to include freelancers, some AOP members have had to cancel or restructure agreements with freelancers producing commercial content. There is fear that any exploration of a new commercial vertical — typically the sort of experimental work that freelancers are often hired to do — will be dead in the water unless it is entirely in-house. Google recommends starting new domains for such ventures to avoid penalty.
This is overreach. Google is correct in that site reputation abuse can undermine the search experience, but its enforcement dictates commercial and hiring decisions that should be the sole domain of publishers, such as when and how freelancers are hired and what work they do. Due to Google’s dominance in search, publishers have no choice but to comply.
Many AOP members drew attention to the commercial impact of the policy, which has come at a time when publisher revenues and traffic are under great strain. Revenue growth for premium publishers has been treading water since the pandemic, and the situation is worse for the long tail of smaller sites that populate the open web.
An AOP member raised the vicious cycle this creates. Due to reduced revenues, publishers cut in-house staff and turn to freelancers to save costs. Then, to recover revenues, publishers turn to new commercial verticals but now can’t use freelancers. Without the staff to expand the business internally, publishers miss a growth opportunity, and freelancers go without work.
Manual enforcement must be backed up by a transparent, publisher-facing interface
Through its own efforts, Google has become a primary custodian of the online information ecosystem, an ecosystem that is currently under immense strain. Now more than ever, Google should be working with publishers to ensure the open web is a commercially viable destination for journalism. It will find no group more committed to this goal than AOP members and, through collaboration, Google can reach solutions that improve the search experience while aligning with publishers’ commercial interests.
Google has demonstrated a collaborative and consultative process for previous platform changes that affected publishers, which makes its hard line, take-it-or-leave-it approach with the Site Reputation Abuse Policy surprising and unprecedented. Premium publishers were consulted during the development of Privacy Sandbox and Core Web Vitals, with enough lead time on the latter’s rollout that they were able to adjust their systems accordingly to achieve compliance prior to launch.
It is worth reiterating that publishers recognise the need for such a policy and, as with Core Web Vitals, are aligned on the importance of protecting the user experience. However, the enforcement of the policy is currently too opaque and unevenly applied to be a suitable mechanism for exacting penalties that can result in millions of pounds in lost revenue.
The AOP proposes, at the very least, a platform through which publishers can submit information on the in-house staff, freelancers, and third parties that work on each of their domains. Through such a process, publishers would know what information they need to supply, the onus would be on these publishers to verify the veracity of such information, and enforcers of the policy would have everything they need to make an informed decision.
Most importantly, the long tail of publishers that are attempting to game Google’s algorithms — the intended target of the policy in question — would be unable to provide such information as it would expose their confliction with the policy. Premium publishers do not game their reputation, they have earned it, some over more than 200 years. Leveraging this reputation to secure ground in new verticals is not abuse, it is a legitimate and necessary strategy for revenue diversification.
This is true not just in digital publishing but across the entire business world. Few look at Virgin today and think of record stores, all because the brand leveraged its reputation and the trust it had built with its customers to establish airlines, hotels, and media businesses. Had Virgin stuck to its retail origins, it would no longer exist.
Google itself is not simply a search engine, it built on its name as a tech innovator to expand into phones, laptops, and home automation. It was not expected — or mandated by an external party — to launch an entirely distinct brand to do so, nor would it have been sound business sense.
The AOP remains hopeful that a solution can be achieved that allows both parties to achieve their aims, and we will continue to advocate for constructive dialogue between our members and our partners at Google.
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