Google is now claiming that its ranking systems “attempt to identify if a segment of a site is independent or dramatically different from the main content of the site. This enables us to surface the most pertinent material from several sources.” This is the reason sites including Fortune Recommends, Forbes Advisor, and other areas of websites observed reductions in Google Search results during the past few weeks.
Google’s Search Liaison gave Glenn Gabe two major comments; there is belief that the Google Press team provided these after he published the article:
A Nightmare on Affiliate Street – How Google is selecting one by one sites that are breaching their “Site reputation abuse” spam policy.
Glenn summed up what he has observed in several areas of websites, including Forbes Advisor and Fortune Recommends, noting declining search prominence. He considered and rightly so that perhaps Google was testing the algorithmic version of the site reputation abuse policy, which is still not algorithmic and most likely won’t be for a long time.
Google made two statements, both of which can be seen below:
- The site reputation abuse policy is not being tested, it is still not algorithmic.
- “Our systems aim to understand if a section of a site is independent or starkly different from the main content of the site. This helps us surface the most useful information from a range of sites.”
Now, this seems to contradict Google’s August 2023 statement that you do not need a specialist site to rank for a topic. John Mueller of Google then said, “A page doesn’t have to be on a site that’s “connected to the niche” in order to be useful & helpful.”
In December 2022, Sullivan noted your material does not need to be on one topic, one specific issue if it is to rank well. Though let us return to the new messaging; it is far more complex than that.
Google is now claiming to have systems in place that attempt to ascertain whether a website is covering a subject unrelated to the one it does not usually write on. Google claimed it has mechanisms to identify that if “a section of a site is independent or starkly different from the main content of the site.” And here is the response Google sent Glenn on the reason several of these websites, including Fortune and Forbes, are witnessing drops in Google Search traffic. Google said:
Google has discussed this mechanism in the past, but it appears that in the past few months it has become quite better in managing it.
Below is some background on that comment from above:
This is therefore not the site reputation abuse algorithm; rather, it is a different method looking to determine whether material across the site mismatches the main content of the site in general.
This is not to argue you cannot grow and publish on subjects you know really well. But going totally outside your lane is probably not advised right now.