After Google made changes to the Site Reputation Abuse Policy a few months ago, the regulations have now been tightened again. In a recent blog post , Google explains that first party involvement between the hosting domain and the company that wants to publish content on this domain does not mean that this domain is exempt from the regulations.
“…no amount of first-party involvement alters the fundamental third-party nature of the content” – Google.
To underline the seriousness of these measures, Google has followed up with action in recent days and removed some examples of such behavior from the index. Forbes Advisor is certainly one of the best-known projects. In the past, there was content and rankings on topics such as “best pet insurance” or “best cbd gummies” if you were willing to pay the appropriate amount. These rankings are now apparently history.
So far, these manual measures by Google seem to only apply to websites in English-speaking countries – in Germany, we have not (yet?) observed such interventions in recent days.
