# Site reputation abuse

Category: [Google Updates & Algorithms](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/google-updates-algorithms/) › [Spam updates & policies](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/google-updates-algorithms/spam-updates-policies/) · Also known as: Parasite SEO

**Site reputation abuse, often called parasite SEO, is the practice of publishing third-party pages on an established site to take advantage of that site's ranking signals. Google announced a spam policy against it on March 5, 2024.**

## What does the policy cover?

Third-party content alone does not violate the policy. It matters whether the pages are there mainly because of the host's established ranking signals. Google's examples include a medical site hosting loosely related third-party pages on "best casinos". Content that is not abusive includes wire service articles, syndicated news, forums and user-generated content, and clearly edited freelancer pieces.

Enforcement began on May 5, 2024. In November 2024 Google clarified that no amount of first-party involvement changes the third-party nature of the content.

## What changed in 2026?

On August 28, 2026, Google announced that from August 30, manual actions under this policy work differently in the European Economic Area. Outside the EEA, the action affects the section concerned. Inside the EEA, the action does not apply, and the section may be separated in Google's systems so that it ranks independently of the rest of the site.

## Example

A newspaper hosts a `/coupons/` folder with pages from an external provider that have no connection to its editorial topics (constructed example).

## At a glance

- **Started:** announced March 5, 2024, in force May 5, 2024
- **Completed:** policy remains in force, EEA change in August 2026
- **Type:** spam policy
- **Affects:** third-party content on established sites that exploits their ranking signals
- **Confirmed by:** yes
- **Docs:** [Google: Spam policies](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies)

Last checked: October 8, 2026

## Google ranking systems 2010–2024

- **June 8, 2010:** Google announces the completion of Caffeine, its new web indexing system. Google says it delivers 50 percent fresher results than the previous index. ([Source](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html))
- **February 24, 2011:** Google announces a ranking change against low-quality and copied content that noticeably affects 11.8% of queries. Google later refers to the system by its nickname “Panda”. ([Source](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html))
- **November 3, 2011:** Google improves how it decides when to favour recent results. According to Google the change affects roughly 35 percent of searches and builds on Caffeine. ([Source](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/giving-you-fresher-more-recent-search.html))
- **January 19, 2012:** Google launches a change that looks at page layout. Pages with little content and many ads above the fold may rank lower. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement))
- **April 24, 2012:** Google announces a change against webspam, later nicknamed “Penguin”. It affects about 3.1% of English queries and roughly 3% of German queries. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality))
- **August 2013:** Hummingbird, which Google describes as a major improvement to its overall ranking systems. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide))
- **2015:** Panda becomes part of the core ranking systems. Google now lists it among its retired systems. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide))
- **2015:** Google launches RankBrain, the first deep learning system used in Search. It relates the words in a query to real-world concepts. ([Source](https://blog.google/products/search/how-ai-powers-great-search-results/))
- **April 21, 2015:** Google starts rolling out the mobile-friendly update, boosting mobile-friendly pages in mobile search results. The industry unofficially calls it “Mobilegeddon”. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2015/04/rolling-out-mobile-friendly-update))
- **September 23, 2016:** Penguin becomes part of the core algorithm and now works in real time. Before that, the list of affected sites was only refreshed periodically. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2016/09/penguin-is-now-part-of-our-core))
- **2018:** Google introduces neural matching. The system helps relate queries to pages through underlying concepts. ([Source](https://blog.google/products/search/how-ai-powers-great-search-results/))
- **2018:** Launch of SpamBrain, Google’s AI-based spam prevention system. Google says it identified nearly six times more spam sites in 2021 than in 2020. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/04/webspam-report-2021))
- **October 25, 2019:** Google applies BERT to ranking and featured snippets. At launch it affects about one in ten English searches in the US. ([Source](https://blog.google/products/search/search-language-understanding-bert/))
- **October 15, 2020:** Google presents passage ranking, which can assess individual passages of a page for a query. Google expects it to improve 7 percent of queries. ([Source](https://blog.google/products/search/search-on/))
- **April 8, 2021:** First product reviews update. It rewards in-depth product reviews and initially covers English-language reviews only. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/04/product-reviews-update))
- **May 18, 2021:** Google introduces MUM, a model trained across 75 languages. Google calls it 1,000 times more powerful than BERT. ([Source](https://blog.google/products/search/introducing-mum/))
- **July 26, 2021:** First link spam update. It aims to identify and nullify link spam across multiple languages and rolls out over two weeks. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/07/link-tagging-and-link-spam-update))
- **August 25 to September 9, 2022:** With the helpful content update, Google aims to show more original, helpful content written for people. ([Source](https://status.search.google.com/incidents/sbKc4YSptrSxcUZFDKwU))
- **December 5, 2022 to January 12, 2023:** December 2022 helpful content update. Google says it improves the classifier and works globally in all languages. ([Source](https://status.search.google.com/incidents/XMdX5PmbMvKW4fv3CRvn))
- **April 12 to April 25, 2023:** The product reviews update becomes the reviews update. Google says it now covers reviews of products, services and other things. ([Source](https://status.search.google.com/incidents/5XRfC46rorevFt8yN8iR))
- **September 14 to September 28, 2023:** September 2023 helpful content update. Google says it improves the classifier again. ([Source](https://status.search.google.com/incidents/53diuQvcEsgzqXTPBb8p))
- **November 8 to December 7, 2023:** November 2023 reviews update. As the reviews system is now improved at a regular pace, Google no longer posts future updates on the Status Dashboard. ([Source](https://status.search.google.com/incidents/VqRTcmyQCwfpuYeaVNfn))
- **March 2024:** The helpful content system becomes part of the core ranking systems. Google now lists it among its retired systems. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide))
- **March 5, 2024:** Three new spam policies against expired domain abuse, scaled content abuse and site reputation abuse. The March 2024 spam update launches the same day. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies))
- **May 5, 2024:** The site reputation abuse policy takes effect. Google had given site owners time to prepare since March. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies))
- **August 5, 2024:** In the US antitrust case against Google, the court describes Navboost as a signal that memorises which documents users click for a query. This is a court document, not a Google publication. ([Source](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.1033.0_1.pdf))
- **November 19, 2024:** Google tightens the site reputation abuse policy. First-party involvement does not change the assessment when third-party content exploits the host site’s ranking signals. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/11/site-reputation-abuse))

## Related terms

- [Scaled content abuse](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/scaled-content-abuse/index.md)
- [Expired domain abuse](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/expired-domain-abuse/index.md)
- [Site diversity](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/site-diversity/index.md)
- [Manual action](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/manual-action/index.md)

## Sources

- [Spam policies for Google web search – Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies)
- [What web creators should know about our March 2024 core update and new spam policies – Google Search Central Blog, 2024-03-05](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies)
- [Updating our site reputation abuse policy – Google Search Central Blog, 2024-11-19](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/11/site-reputation-abuse)
- [Update to the Site Reputation Policy – Google Search Central Blog, 2026-08-28](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/08/update-site-reputation-policy)

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Last updated: October 8, 2026
URL: https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/site-reputation-abuse/