--- title: "Site reputation abuse: what the evidence actually shows" url: https://seomadman.com/research/site-reputation-abuse-what-is-actually-measured section: research published: 2026-07-23T00:00:00.000Z modified: 2026-07-23T00:00:00.000Z author: Adam Hafez topics: ["Core updates", "Technical SEO"] --- # Site reputation abuse: what the evidence actually shows ## The short answer Google's site reputation abuse policy has produced named manual actions against Forbes Advisor, CNN Underscored, WSJ Buyside and others since late 2024. Google said in March 2024 it would fight this with both manual actions and an algorithm; independent trackers report only manual actions through May 2026. Google has published no enforcement count. ## Key takeaways - Google's spam policy page defines site reputation abuse as third-party content published mainly because of a host's own ranking signals, not the third party's. - Google said in March 2024 it would enforce the policy with both manual actions and search algorithms; no public Google statement confirms the algorithmic half has shipped. - Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal reported named manual actions against Forbes Advisor, CNN Underscored, WSJ Buyside and other sites' third-party sections in late 2024. - Google has never published a count of pages or sites affected by this specific policy. - Every case example in public circulation was found and publicized by an individual SEO practitioner watching their own client or competitor data, not by a systematic audit. Eighteen months after Google's first manual actions under the site reputation abuse policy, the practice it targets, renting a trusted domain's ranking signal to third-party content, has become a byword in SEO for something that no longer works. Whether that claim rests on evidence or on a handful of loud examples is a separate question, and one Google's own documentation does not answer. ## What Google actually defines and says it does **The policy's wording, current as of its 28 August 2026 update**, is precise about mechanism, not just intent: it "applies where third-party 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 examples Google gives are specific: an educational site hosting sponsored payday-loan reviews, a medical site hosting a low-quality "best casinos" page written by someone else. The policy carves out wire services, syndication, forums and properly attributed affiliate content as acceptable, which is a narrower target than "any third-party content" would suggest. **Google committed to a dual enforcement track before any enforcement happened.** Its [March 2024 announcement](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies) of the new spam policies stated the plan was to fight site reputation abuse with both manual actions and search algorithms, with the policy taking effect from 5 May 2024. That is a commitment to two mechanisms, made in advance, against which later reporting can be checked. ## What has actually been observed **The manual actions are real and named.** [Search Engine Journal's coverage in December 2024](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-strengthens-policy-against-site-reputation-abuse/533018/) reported manual actions against CNN Underscored, WSJ Buyside, Forbes Advisor, USA Today's Reviewed, Newsweek's Vault and The Sun UK's shopping section, timed days before Black Friday that year. SEO practitioners Glenn Gabe and Lily Ray, cited in that reporting, described entire subfolders losing indexed pages. This is the strongest tier of evidence available on this topic: a named outlet, attributing specific claims to named practitioners, about specific named sites. **The algorithmic half of the promise is not confirmed to have shipped.** Glenn Gabe, writing on his own site in July 2024, said enforcement to that point had been manual-only, with the algorithmic component he expected still unreleased. A [Capconvert retrospective published in May 2026](https://www.capconvert.com/learn/blog/google-site-reputation-abuse-18-months) describes the same manual-only status roughly 18 months in. Neither source is Google itself, and no Google statement found in this research confirms or denies that the algorithmic component has since shipped inside a later, unlabeled spam or core update. That gap between what Google said it would build and what independent trackers can observe is the most honest thing that can be said about current enforcement. **No published number exists for total enforcement scope.** Not Google's policy page, not its March 2024 announcement, not the August 2026 EEA enforcement change, states a count of pages, sites or manual actions. Every figure attached to this policy in public circulation, including the query-loss numbers Capconvert attributes to Forbes Advisor and Fortune Recommends, comes from third-party visibility tools reading a domain's search performance, not from Google disclosing anything. ## The selection bias in every case study Every named example in this piece, and every other one in circulation, exists because a specific person was already watching that specific domain's data when a drop happened, and chose to publish it. Forbes Advisor and CNN Underscored are large enough that a subfolder going to zero shows up instantly in rank-tracking tools that SEO practitioners already had open. A mid-size publisher, or a smaller site running the exact same third-party subfolder arrangement, could receive an identical manual action and never produce a public case study, simply because nobody with an audience happened to be watching. That means the set of "confirmed" cases is not a sample of enforcement, it is a sample of enforcement that was both large enough and visible enough to someone already looking. Treat the list of named publishers as a lower bound on scope, not a census of it. ## What this means for publishers The policy's own wording, and the named cases so far, both point the same direction: a subfolder that exists mainly to borrow a host's authority, with little first-party editorial involvement, is the specific target, not any third-party content by definition. That much can be stated with confidence, because it comes from Google's own documentation. What cannot be stated with confidence is how common enforcement is beyond the publishers big enough to be watched, or whether the algorithmic detection Google promised in 2024 is now running quietly. A publisher weighing a licensed-subfolder deal should read the named cases as proof the policy is real and enforced against sites with real editorial resources, and read the absence of a published enforcement count as a reason not to assume a smaller, quieter arrangement is safe simply because it has not made the SEO news cycle yet. ## Frequently asked questions ### Has Google confirmed how many sites were hit by site reputation abuse manual actions? No. Google's documentation defines the policy and its own blog announced the enforcement plan, but no Google source publishes a count of affected pages, sites or manual actions. Every number in circulation, including query-loss figures for specific publishers, comes from third-party tools reading a site's visibility, not from Google. ### Is enforcement manual, algorithmic, or both? Google said in March 2024 it would use both. Independent trackers, including SEO consultant Glenn Gabe in mid-2024 and Capconvert in a May 2026 retrospective, report observing only manual actions in that window. No source found here has Google itself confirming the algorithmic half has shipped. ### Why do case studies about this policy only mention a handful of large publishers? Because the reporting is driven by individual practitioners noticing a drop in a site they already track, usually a large publisher with enough baseline visibility for a drop to be obvious in third-party tools. A smaller site with the same penalty would very likely not produce a public case study at all. ## Sources 1. [Spam policies for Google Search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) - Google Search Central (primary) 2. [What web creators should know about our March 2024 core update and new spam policies](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies) - Google Search Central (primary) 3. [Google's Site Reputation Abuse Crackdown Hits Major Publishers](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-strengthens-policy-against-site-reputation-abuse/533018/) - Search Engine Journal 4. [Google's site reputation abuse spam policy and why an algorithmic approach to enforcing violations is the way forward](https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/google-site-reputation-abuse-spam-policy-algorithmic-approach/) - GSQi (Glenn Gabe) 5. [Google Site Reputation Abuse: 18 Months In](https://www.capconvert.com/learn/blog/google-site-reputation-abuse-18-months) - Capconvert