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Video: Google Volatility With Gains & Losses, Updated Web Spam Policies, Cache Gone & More Search News – Search Engine Roundtable

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Google Search rankings gains were lost for many, followed more more volatility this week. Google updated its web search spam policies, with a focus on site reputation abuse. Google’s cache operator is now fully dead. Google’s site command for image search seems broken. Google fixed a Search Console reporting bug with product snippets. Google Maps has this fake reviews notice on business profiles. There may have been a spike in reviewed removed by Google on September 17th. Also small changes to your business listing may now trigger re-verification on Google Business Profiles. Google merchant listings now added priceType and sale pricing examples. Google spoke about image SEO and the importance of the embedded page. Google is testing new shopping/product cards on the search results. Google is testing “from small businesses” carousel. Google is testing “states in the news” and “backstory” sections for top stutters. Google product detail grids is testing most popular and best price labels. Google is testing for you labels and preferred source labels. Google Ads has a ten sitelinks but it is a bug. We had a poll on if you are using traditional search less now with AI products out. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
SPONSOR: This week’s video recap is sponsored by Duda, the Professional Website Builder You Can Call Your Own.
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Gain Greater Search Visibility With AI Overviews [Webinar] – Search Engine Journal

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Download your copy of SEO Trends 2025 and discover what to be hopeful about in a changing search world.
Join us in analyzing 3 case studies that show the importance of driving brand search behavior and engagement, and how to do it in months, instead of years.
Download this guide and learn how to optimize and manage Google Performance Max campaigns, with expert insights and actionable strategies to ensure your campaigns are effective.
With Tom Capper, we will dive into fresh data comparing the prevalence of AI Overviews by industry, geographic location, search intent stage and more, along with what factors correlate with appearing in them.
Join us in analyzing 3 case studies that show the importance of driving brand search behavior and engagement, and how to do it in months, instead of years.
Join us as we dive into exclusive survey data from industry-leading SEOs, digital marketers, content marketers, and more to highlight the top priorities and challenges that will shape the future of search in 2025.
Join us as we explore an in-depth analysis of 120,000 Google queries, uncovering critical insights into Google’s AI Overviews, and how to utilize them effectively.
The world of search is undergoing a seismic shift, with AI-powered tools like ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot changing how users interact with search results. But even in this time of rapid innovation, one thing remains certain: Google continues to dominate the search landscape, holding an impressive 90% market share.
So, what does this mean for your search strategy? How can you adapt to stay visible and competitive?
That’s where we come in.
Join us on December 5th for an exclusive webinar with experts from Botify and DemandSphere, where we’ll walk through their in-depth analysis of 120,000 Google queries.
Together, we’ll uncover critical insights into Google’s AI Overviews, and how to utilize them effectively.
Whether you’re a seasoned SEO professional or just starting out, this webinar will give you the insights and tools you need to navigate today’s increasingly competitive organic search environment.
AI Overviews are quickly becoming a defining feature of Google’s search results. Understanding how to optimize for these changes could be the difference between thriving in search or being left behind.
Plus, we’ll explore why SEO fundamentals—like high-quality content and effective crawling strategies—remain essential, even in an AI-driven world.
Join us for this live session to gain exclusive insights, participate in an interactive Q&A after the webinar, and walk away with actionable strategies to plan your SEO efforts for 2025.
Can’t attend live? No problem! Register now, and we’ll send you a recording so you can watch when you want.
Heather has over 20 years of industry experience and is the Director of Marketing at Search Engine Journal. Having worked …
Conquer your day with daily search marketing news.
In a world ruled by algorithms, SEJ brings timely, relevant information for SEOs, marketers, and entrepreneurs to optimize and grow their businesses — and careers.
Copyright © 2024 Search Engine Journal. All rights reserved. Published by Alpha Brand Media.

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Google Updates Its Site Reputation Abuse Policy, Upending Publisher Affiliate Businesses – Adweek

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Google issued a critical update to its Site Reputation Abuse policy on Tuesday, the culmination of a monthslong effort from the search platform to close a loophole that publishers had been using for years to generate passive affiliate revenue.
In the controversial SEO practice that Google is looking to end, publishers would allow third-party vendors to publish content—typically product recommendations with affiliate links—on their websites. 
Because of the publishers’ strong search authority, these affiliate pages would get a boost in visibility and generate passive revenue, which the two companies would split.
For instance, a vendor called Forbes Marketplace (in which Forbes is a minority investor) creates financial content for CNN Underscored, the affiliate arm of CNN.
But the distinction between the two operations is practically invisible, leaving consumers unaware that the credit card reviews they are browsing on CNN Underscored are actually created by a third party. Some analysts pejoratively refer to the practice as “parasite SEO.”

Exclusive: Forbes, CNN, and More Lose Millions as New Google Policy Tanks Affiliate Businesses

In its original description of Site Reputation Abuse, which debuted in March, Google stipulated that the owner of a website had to have some involvement in producing the third-party content. If the publisher had a hand in the process, then there was no Site Reputation Abuse.
However, in the updated language from the new blog post, Google clarified that no level of publisher involvement in the process mitigates the violation. Going forward, any use of third-party content on a site to exploit the search authority of the publisher constitutes Site Reputation Abuse.
“We’ve heard very clearly from users that site reputation abuse—commonly referred to as ‘parasite SEO’—leads to a bad search experience for people,” Chris Nelson, a senior staff analyst of search ranking at Google, told ADWEEK. “Today’s policy update helps to crack down on this behavior.”
Despite the new language, not all third-party content violates the new policy. For instance, wire services, sponsored content, and news syndications are among the variety of exceptions Google lists on its official spam policy forum.
Site owners who have violated the new Site Reputation Abuse policy will receive a spam manual action, which occurs when a human reviewer at Google has determined that pages on the site are not compliant with Google spam policies.
In similar but less flagrant cases, Google also has a series of systems designed to detect if a section of a site is “independent or starkly different from” the main content of the site. In those situations, the search platform will treat these site sub-sections as standalone sites, meaning they will not get a ranking boost just because of the reputation of the main site.
This latter method of enforcement will reduce the search visibility of these sub-sections, leading to a decline in traffic. 
“This doesn’t mean that these sub-sections have somehow been demoted or are in violation of our spam policies,” the blog post notes. “It simply means we’re measuring them independently, even if they are located within a site.”
The policy revision comes one week after reporting from ADWEEK detailed a steep decline in the search visibility of the affiliate arms of several premium publishers.
Beginning in July, the search visibility of the Forbes, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fortune, and Time affiliate operations dropped sharply.
Between Sept. 12 and Oct. 31, search visibility declined 43% at Forbes Advisor, 77% at WSJ Buy-Side, 63% at CNN Underscored, 72% at Fortune Recommends, and 97% at Time Stamped, according to data compiled for ADWEEK by Sistrix.

Crucially, the declines were isolated only to the affiliate arms of these publishers, said Sistrix marketing manager Steve Paine. For example, CNN Underscored declined in search visibility, but CNN.com did not.
This pattern is highly atypical, according to Paine. It is rare to see such a small number of sites be affected by an SEO update, and it is rarer still to see site directories, rather than the domains themselves, experiencing isolated drop-offs. 
Speaking with ADWEEK, several search analysts suspected that the drop-offs were related to these publishers violating the Site Reputation Abuse policy. All five publishers worked with third-party vendors to power—to varying degrees—their affiliate businesses. 
In a statement provided to ADWEEK at the time, Google described the fundamental dynamic of Site Reputation Abuse without using the phrase specifically.
“We’re working to combat tactics where third parties try to exploit a site’s reputation just to rank well in search,” a Google spokesperson told ADWEEK. “We recently updated our spam policies to specifically target this type of behavior.” 
The declines have led to material losses in revenue and traffic for the publishers.
But perhaps more critically, the crackdowns signal that the underlying model that animated these affiliate operations—working with a third party to run the business, then splitting the proceeds—is no longer viable.
Mark Stenberg is Adweek’s senior media reporter.
Adweek is the leading source of news and insight serving the brand marketing ecosystem.

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Google Strengthens Policy Against Site Reputation Abuse – Search Engine Journal

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Download your copy of SEO Trends 2025 and discover what to be hopeful about in a changing search world.
Join us in analyzing 3 case studies that show the importance of driving brand search behavior and engagement, and how to do it in months, instead of years.
Download this guide and learn how to optimize and manage Google Performance Max campaigns, with expert insights and actionable strategies to ensure your campaigns are effective.
With Tom Capper, we will dive into fresh data comparing the prevalence of AI Overviews by industry, geographic location, search intent stage and more, along with what factors correlate with appearing in them.
Join us in analyzing 3 case studies that show the importance of driving brand search behavior and engagement, and how to do it in months, instead of years.
Join us as we dive into exclusive survey data from industry-leading SEOs, digital marketers, content marketers, and more to highlight the top priorities and challenges that will shape the future of search in 2025.
Google updates site reputation abuse policy, prohibiting third-party content from exploiting host domains regardless of first-party oversight.
Google has issued new clarification for its site reputation abuse policy, which was launched earlier this year. It targets “parasite SEO” practices where websites leverage established domains to manipulate search rankings through third-party content.
Chris Nelson from the Google Search Quality team states:
“We’ve heard very clearly from users that site reputation abuse – commonly referred to as ‘parasite SEO’ – leads to a bad search experience for people, and today’s policy update helps to crack down on this behavior.”
The updated policy states that using third-party content to exploit a site’s ranking signals violates Google’s guidelines, regardless of first-party involvement or oversight.
This clarification comes after Google’s review of various business arrangements, including white-label services, licensing agreements, and partial ownership structures.
The updated policy language states:
“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.”
Google outlines several examples of policy violations, including:
Google acknowledges there’s a difference between abusive practices and legitimate third-party content.
Acceptable examples include:
Enforcement of the site reputation abuse policy began in May.
The rollout is having a notable impact in the news and publishing industry, as documented by Olga Zarr.
Major organizations, including CNN, USA Today, and LA Times, were among the first to receive manual penalties, primarily for hosting third-party coupons and promotional content.
Glenn Gabe shared early observations:
Here’s another example. The query “uber promos codes” yielded CNN as #2 yesterday and Fortune at #4. Both are now gone. I can’t even find them. Wow. pic.twitter.com/0Oc48ggYeh
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 6, 2024

The recovery process has shown clear patterns: sites that removed offending content or implemented noindex tags on affected sections have started seeing their manual actions lifted. However, ranking recovery takes time as Google’s crawlers need to process these changes.
BTW, here’s a site that never dropped (must have slipped through the cracks when manual actions were sent out). But, they noindexed the coupons directory recently anyway. The site actually surges when others drop out due to manual actions. But again, that content is noindexed… pic.twitter.com/6lz8umfeBl
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 11, 2024

While enforcement relies on manual actions, Google has indicated plans for algorithmic updates to automate the detection and demotion of site reputation abuse, though no specific timeline has been announced.
Site owners found in violation will receive notifications through Search Console and can submit reconsideration requests.
Featured Image: JarTee/Shutterstock
Matt G. Southern, Senior News Writer, has been with Search Engine Journal since 2013. With a bachelor’s degree in communications, …
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