Heads-up! Huge news from Google about its ‘Site reputation abuse’ spam policy and about its systems that identify if a subdomain or section of content is ‘starkly different’ than the main content. Oh, and they discuss site-wide signals (just like I explained in my post yesterday). First, Google updated its ‘Site reputation abuse’ policy to explain that it doesn’t matter if there is first-party involvement or oversight. They now view it as exploiting the power of the site the content is published on. From Google: “We’re 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.” Enforcement will still be via manual actions and not algorithmic. Next up, Google discussed its algorithms that can rank content differently when it sees that content as ‘independent or starkly different from the main content on the site.’ Google explained they want to treat those sub-sections of sites as separate so they don’t get a ranking boost just because of the reputation of the main site. From Google: “Our efforts to understand differences in sections of sites can lead to traffic changes if sub-sections no longer benefit from site-wide signals. This doesn’t mean the sub-sections have been demoted or are in violation of our spam policies. It simply means we’re measuring them independently, even if they are located within a site.” Again, Google explains the sections were benefiting from site-wide signals. Yep, they are real (like I covered yesterday.) :)