Investigations into Google Spam update
Like many here, I am suffering with one of my niche websites which has bombed with the recent Google Spam update. I had to investigate to try to find out if there were any vulnerabilities.
My domain is a mature one (3+ years). My website has 242 article posts, but it also has a WooCommerce powered web shop with 140 affiliate products in it. These products are in 19 different categories. Those affiliate links were NOT marked as 'nofollow'. The category pages also had an affiliate link on them. Again, they were NOT 'nofollow' links. That was not good practice on my part. The website was an old one and wasn’t really built for the purpose of making money, but it should still have followed the rules.
Google Search Console shows complete de-listing of all the web shop product pages, starting 6th March 2024, and a general down-listing of the other article pages (none of which had affiliate links). The site has slowly been demoted in search results.
I presume the product pages were causing me problems (although they hadn't until now). The affiliate links pointed to Amazon. Google has obviously marked my site as guilty of sucking Amazon juice to boost my rankings. I've now marked all my outgoing affiliate links as 'nofollow' and resubmitted the site to Search Console.
Let's see if anything happens.
Check your affiliate links. Make sure they are marked as 'nofollow'. Google may just demote a few pages, but it may just penalise your whole website. It's a lottery at the moment. Google are looking for any reasons to penalise your site. They are appearing to be especially severe on affiliate sites. Protect yourself as much as you can.
Take the opportunity to check you aren't doing anything Google will take issue with.
Recent Comments
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Hey Dave,
It wouldn't specifically be for "just" having affiliate links not marked as "No Follow" or even "Sponsored".
Furthermore, I've mentioned a few times that ever since the Helpful Content Update of 2023 (Which now forms part of the Core Update) that Google is "CURRENTLY" (it won't last) ranking content based on the authority of the domain.
Additionally, The Helpful Content Updates on August 2022 and September 2023 produced "sitewide signals" (basically, if it was found that SOME of your content was deemed "unhelpful" your entire site would suffer, hence all the 70-90% drops in Google Organic traffic over the last 18 months).
THIS HAS CHANGED to a "Page-by-page basis" in the MArcj 2024 CORE Update (your articles that are deemed helpful will rank, those that aren't won't<---- this will tell you which articles require updating or deleting).
For me, as I've mentioned numerous times now, everyone has to wait until the "Parasite SEO", "Aged Domain Abuse", and "Scaled AI Content" is dealt with on May 5th 2023.
My guess is that will last for about 2 weeks, so realistically NO-ONE will know what is happening with Google SERPs until then.
I know it doesn't really help anyone, but after 16 years in this business, I've seen it all before (the 2011 and 2012 "Penguin and Panda" Google Updates saw me go from a 6-figure earner to ZERO in 2 months).
Basically, Google appears to have these HUGE updates every few years, the SERPs look ridiculous, and then a few months later we seem to enjoy a "Golden Age of Google" for a few years, and the cycle starts all over again.
I've written twice about these updates over the last month, so you can check out my LONG (LOL) blog posts below. My Personal Opinions/Insights on GOOGLE + a FREE TOOL For You to Play With AND A Quick Note About Google’s Core & Spam Updates Partha
Thanks ParthaB. It certainly gives us all a chance to get our houses in order and make our websites the best version of themselves whilst this is all going on. We'll then come out of the other side in the best state going forward.
It makes it impossible to test things in the meantime, but like you say, it's happened before and will happen again. We must plod on.
Dave
Hi Dave thank you for this information.
For some reason my impressions have dropped significantly since the end of January so I'm wondering if this is the case. How would you mark affiliate links as 'no follow'?
Thank you and have a great day!
I inject the following on each product page:
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="nofollow">
I don't use 'noindex' as I DO still want the product pages indexed by Google.
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I see you are working on a fix so thats good. I am glad you learned this lesson. Some affiliate links can have broken links make sure you check that too. External links as well. I hope you can do a SEO audit. Its a great idea to do everything you can to fix it. Its going to be an arduous process for you. My heart ❤️ goes out to you. I understand it’s frustrating. I would feel the same. All this is a learning process. Thanks for sharing and warning others what not to do. Sounds like Partha is 100 percent right about what he shared about Google HCU and what you can do to fix it. May have to get rid of articles that no longer has a purpose, clean it up. Hard work on that.
Hi BrendaMZ.
It's a local weather website. Every month I post reports from my own observations. Every now and again I post more topical posts, all original, no AI.
The Woocommerce shop has existed for ages, as has the site. I don't push anything in people's faces, but anyone wanting to buy anything can do so at the shop. I prefer to keep it separate rather than post affiliate links in articles.
I also agree with ParthaB that it wouldn't be the 'nofollow' stuff alone causing the problems, so maybe not too serious a problem. I'm also working on improving internal linking.
I'll do the 'nofollow' stuff anyway, and will just wait to see how things recover. It’s not a site that I rely on to make my living, but it contributed in the past and i’d like it to continue into the future.
Dave
I hope so for your sake. Thanks for sharing that.