Google has updated not just its site reputation abuse policy for clarification purposes, Google also updated the manual actions section for site reputation abuse. Finally, Google also updated the language on Search Quality User report. Again, these are just clarification changes, and as Google put it, "it include guidance from our blog post's FAQ on site reputation abuse."
Google noted here that they "Updated the site reputation abuse policy to include guidance from our blog post's FAQ on site reputation abuse." This was done "to make it easier to find this guidance. These are editorial changes only, no change in behavior."
But Google did not mention the manual actions document. But Google did mention it in their updated blog post at the bottom.
Here is what changed there between the old version and the new version:
New:
Old:
Google removed this paragraph:
Site reputation abuse is the practice of publishing third-party pages on a site in an attempt to abuse search rankings by taking advantage of the host site's ranking signals. Such third-party pages include sponsored, advertising, partner, or other third-party pages that are typically independent of the main site's purpose.
Google added this section:
Look for any third-party content on your site that violates the site reputation abuse policy. To get a better sense of where the violating content appears, review the list of patterns of affected pages in the message you received from Search Console (either in the Search Console Messages center, Manual Actions report, or by email). Decide what to do with the violating content and take action. For example, moving the violating content to a new domain, using noindex to exclude the content from Search indexing, or redoing the content as first-party content. Caution: Moving the content to another established site or to a subdomain/subdirectory within your site may not resolve the underlying issue: Moving to a subdomain/subdirectory may be viewed as an attempt to circumvent our spam policy, which could lead to broader actions against your site in Google Search. Moving to an established site may introduce a site reputation abuse issue to the established site if that site has its own reputation and the third-party nature is unchanged. If you moved the content to a new domain, and you link from the old site to the new site, use the nofollow attribute in those links. Avoid redirecting URLs from the old site to the new site, as redirecting may introduce the site reputation abuse issue again.
Here is the new site reputation abuse policy versus the old policy:
New:
Old:
Then on the Search Quality User report, the site reputation abuse section now reads:
A tactic where third-party pages content is published on a host site mainly because of that host's already-established ranking signals, which it has earned primarily from its first-party content. The goal of this tactic is for the content to rank better than it could otherwise on its own.
It used to read:
Third-party pages are published with little or no first-party oversight or involvement, where the purpose is to manipulate search rankings by taking advantage of the first-party site's ranking signals.
There are a lot of changes here but again, stuff we already knew.
Forum discussion at X.
