Google Search Systems Downgrading Rankings For Content Starkly Different From Main Content

Google is now saying it has ranking systems that “aim to understand if a section of a site is independent or starkly different from the main content of the site. This helps us surface the most useful information from a range of sites.” This is the reason that sites like Fortune Recommends, Forbes Advisor and other sections of sites saw declines in Google Search rankings over the past several weeks.

Glenn Gabe received two big statements from Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan and I think the Google Press team after his write-up named A Nightmare on Affiliate Street – How Google is picking off sites one by one that are violating its ‘Site reputation abuse’ spam policy. Glenn summed up what he has been seeing around these sections of sites, like Fortune Recommends and Forbes Advisor, seeing a drop in search visibility. He thought, and rightfully so, that maybe Google was testing the algorithmic version of the site reputation abuse policy which is still not algorithmic and likely won’t be for a long time.

The two statements from Google were:

(1) The site reputation abuse policy is not being tested, it is still not algorithmic.

(2) “Our systems aim to understand if a section of a site is independent or starkly different from the main content of the site. This helps us surface the most useful information from a range of sites.”

Update #2: I just received a response from Google since I followed up after learning that Google was NOT testing the ‘Site reputation abuse’ algorithm. Here is their response:

“Our systems aim to understand if a section of a site is independent or starkly different from the main… https://t.co/mVyycyM3rJ

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 24, 2024

Now, this seems to go against communication from Google from August 2023 where Google said you don’t need a niche site to rank for for a topic. John Mueller from Google wrote then, “A page doesn’t have to be on a site that’s “related to the niche” in order to be useful & helpful.”

Sullivan said a similar thing in December 2022 where he said your content does not need to be on one topic, one niche topic, for it to rank well. It is a lot more nuanced than that, but let’s get back to the new messaging.

Google is now saying that it has systems that try to determine if a site is writing about a topic that is not the topic it doesn’t often write about. Google said if “a section of a site is independent or starkly different from the main content of the site,” it has systems to detect that. And this is the statement Google gave Glenn on the reason why some of these sections of sites, like from Fortune and Forbes, are seeing declines in Google Search traffic. “This helps us surface the most useful information from a range of sites,” Google added.

Google has spoken about this system before, but it seems Google has gotten a bit better at handling it in the past couple of months.

Here is that post from 2019 from Google on this topic, which we covered back then. Google sent Glenn this tweet for context on that statement from above:

We’ve been asked if third-parties can host content in subdomains or subfolders of another’s domain. It’s not against our guidelines. But as the practice has grown, our systems are being improved to better know when such content is independent of the main site & treat accordingly.

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) August 14, 2019

Our guidance is if you want the best success with Search, provide value-added content from your own efforts that reflect your own brand.

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) August 14, 2019

So, this is not the site reputation abuse algorithm; this is a different algorithm that looks to see if content across the site mismatches the primary content of the site in general.

This isn’t to say you can’t expand and write about topics you know really well. But to go completely out of your lane, is something likely not recommended now.

I guess there goes my plans of writing about fishing…

Forum discussion at X.