The Parasite SEO Crackdown Is Here

MICHAEL:
Hi guys, Michael here. Do you want a second opinion on your SEO? Head to theseoshow.co and hit the link in the header. We'll take a look under the hood at your SEO, your competitors and your market and tell you how you can improve. All right, let's get into the show.

INTRO: It's time for The SEO Show, where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.

MICHAEL: Why hello and welcome to another episode of the SEO show. That wasn't the real intro, was it?

ARTHUR: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Okay. Cause you said to me, do something different, freestyle it. And that was it.

ARTHUR: I regret that, but let's carry on anyway.

MICHAEL: I reckon that's right. Do you know the Seinfeld episode? Where Jerry talks about his girlfriend's belly button saying hello? Why, hello! Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. It's from like late seasons of Seinfeld. I do, yeah. Once Larry left the show, it wasn't as good.

ARTHUR: Last two seasons, right? I believe so.

MICHAEL: It might have even just been the last one.

ARTHUR: Yeah, we're going off topic. I think it was good still.

MICHAEL: It got too zany. Got a bit too kooky. But anyway, we're not here to talk about Seinfeld. You know what?

ARTHUR: We should do a Seinfeld podcast.

MICHAEL: Do you want to start one? Yeah, maybe. We know nothing about it. We have no connections to the show or any.

ARTHUR: We know we've watched it like a thousand times over.

MICHAEL: Well, that's true. So we know a lot about it from what we've seen on the show, but you know, victory, the podcast, that was cool. Cause you had behind the scenes stuff. Yeah. Anyway, let's not talk about this because something big, not even that big, but something's happened in the SEO world. Hasn't it?

ARTHUR: I don't know. You tell me. I'm telling you. You're educating me today.

MICHAEL: Because Arthur hasn't been paying that much attention to this. He's been too busy actually doing SEO for clients and the like. But the Parasite SEO, or as Google refers to it, the Site Reputation Abuse Policy, has come into action. It's been a big moment. It's been hinted at Since March, early March, they came out and said, we're giving everyone until the 5th of May, that's doing Parasite SEO or allowing Parasite SEO to happen on their website. They're giving them a month to clean up their act before they crack down on them.

ARTHUR: Starting as of this, like the last two days.

MICHAEL: March 5th, around March 5th, is when they pre-announced that May 5th, they're going to be cracking down.

ARTHUR: So they're cracking down now, as we speak. Yes. Effectively. Because it's May 8th for the listeners.

MICHAEL: Yeah. So May whatever in US, 7th. So it's been happening over the last couple of days. Interesting. Because they don't pre-announce that they're going to obliterate websites in an update any other time, but this time they did.

ARTHUR: Has there been much chatter on X or Twitter or whatever you want to call it? Oh, there's been chatter.

MICHAEL: Yeah? Because first when it was announced, we spoke about it at the time. It's kind of like they were doing a publicity war first as part of this. Possibly because algorithmically trying to penalize parasite hosts is really hard. So to clarify what we're talking about with parasite. if you have a really strong domain name. So an example that everyone always uses is a website called Outlook India. So it's like DR80+. I was reading that DR80 or higher sites make up 0.007% of all websites in Ahrefs database. They actually just gave out t-shirts to people that have DR80 plus sites. So they're in the DR80 club. So they're very strong domains. They have authority. Google absolutely loves authority. It's algorithm rewards authority. What is authority? It's lots of links pointing back to your site. So these super authoritative strong sites Realized well a lot of SEO people realize that you could go to those sites and buy a guest post on them publish the post and include affiliate links to high value affiliate offers like casinos or CBD gummies or weight loss pills, whatever. Replica Rolexes, there's a whole bunch of like spam that's put up there. This has been going on for years. And we, you know, we do our recaps at the end of each year with predictions. Yep. You predicted this. So episode 62, December 22, I said, they're going to crack down on parasites.

ARTHUR: You predicted it last year as well.

MICHAEL: And yeah, they didn't crack down on it in 2023. So then last year I predicted it and it's happening this year. And it had to happen because It's just so flagrant, you know, the abuse that's going on out there. What I think it actually says is that algorithmically, Google's algorithm just so is weighted towards rewarding authority, strong websites, like websites with good links. It's always been that since Google was made. And no matter what they've done over the years with updates and adding in machine learning and blah, blah, blah, at the end of the day, the strong sites will rank well. So algorithmically, all these sites had to do was publish these articles, and they would push to the top for a keyword like best online casino.

ARTHUR: But they would also do stuff like link build to that article. Correct. They wouldn't just leave it at posting. They would actually do SEO on that article.

MICHAEL: Yes. So it's authority on authority. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, they came out and said, that's it. We're getting rid of this. We've got a month to shape up or ship out. Big PR push. Everyone's sort of been waiting, like, how are they going to algorithmically do this? And May 5th sort of came and went, nothing happened. Everyone's like, oh, well, great update. Yeah. But then Danny Sullivan, who's like Google's basically, their PR Person now like he's got a long history in the SEO community Publishing on big industry blogs, but then he moved over to work for Google and he's now What's his title like search liaison or something? Yeah search liaison on Twitter. Mm-hmm, and he said when everyone was saying Where is this he chimed in and said well like the policy began yesterday, but we're actually kicking it off later tomorrow, right? so already there's a bit of a delay and then as stuff started happening He said, well, we're only doing manual actions right now. The algorithmic component is going to come, but that's later. Yeah. So they announced it by a month, pre-announced it. So they're lagging. Delayed. Right. And then it's just manual penalties that they've done.

ARTHUR: So are you suspecting that there is no algorithmic?

MICHAEL: Yeah, I suspect it's super hard to crack down on this stuff algorithmically.

ARTHUR: Because they would know very well which these parasites, like there's very obvious parasite sites. Yeah. So they're basically probably just gone through, picked like the top whatever and then just hit them.

MICHAEL: Yep, because otherwise you're updating the entire algorithm to discount authority.

ARTHUR: Yeah, which would be like Amazon and all these other sites.

MICHAEL: The search would be in upheaval. Yeah. So I reckon it's just going to continue to be manual.

ARTHUR: Well, like Outlook India was one of the main ones, right? And I think forever, whenever you search for best casino or online casino in Australia, it'd be Outlook India, right?

MICHAEL: There's Outlook India. It's not there anymore. Sports Illustrated.

ARTHUR: Sports Illustrated is like page two. Yeah. But I remember at the top it was like Outlook India, Sports Illustrated, maybe like one or two other ones. Now it's Trustpilot. First Post is still, I guess, a parasite.

MICHAEL: Well, what we're finding is because they're doing these updates, because they're manually targeting sites, we're finding other high authority sites are just pushing up to fill the space. Well, yeah. I think with this, it's just they've done a lot of very public PR-based updates in the past, where they try to spook people, and then they sort of just seem to move on. I don't know how they're going to release an algorithmic component in the future. Because as we said, it's all about authority. So at the moment now, people in Google Search Console are getting a new type of manual action update, where it says site reputation abuse, and it says a portion of your site contains content that violates their spam policies, and just that portion is what's being discounted. So a lot of these big sites, like an example in Australia, 9.com.au and 7, they have coupon subdomains that are just filled with coupon codes for, you know, shopping, food, all that sort of stuff. And those things have just been blasted out of the search results now.

ARTHUR: Have you seen Outlook India's traffic in Ahrefs?

MICHAEL: No. Show me. What are you seeing?

ARTHUR: Just that.

MICHAEL: Well, that's from earlier in the year.

ARTHUR: Yeah. It's just been like, if you're looking at projected traffic from like 20 million or whatever. Yeah.

MICHAEL: Is that right? No, it's more like 30 mil.

ARTHUR: Yeah. To what's that? Like 14, 12. Go here though.

MICHAEL: Well, you control this computer.

ARTHUR: Whoa. Yeah. So that's a huge hit. Yeah. But, um,

MICHAEL: What we're seeing is it's separate to this. So Outlook India, a lot of these coupon sites have no indexed their coupon subfolders or subdirectories. Because what they're doing is just targeting subdirectories or subfolders, sections of the site. And then the rest of your site is fine. Which is, I find unfair, because helpful content, which there's been a couple of those updates over the past year, that uses a site-wide classifier, where your whole site is blasted out of the search results, because it deems some of it to be unhelpful content. But in this case, they're giving these big publishers a month notice, and then they only apply it manually to a portion of the site, and the rest of the site's fine. So to me it's more of a PR thing at the moment, but we're only a couple of days into this, so who knows what's going to happen over the next week. We'll start to see data and stuff come through on the types of losses these sites are seeing. But it is a pretty interesting little time in the SEO world.

ARTHUR: Will finally happen. Yes. Took a while, but

MICHAEL: Finally happen the amount of like flagrant people just posting on Twitter. Here's how to do parasite SEO selling parasite SEO courses Flying in the face of Google, you know sticking the middle finger up to them. Basically. It was always gonna happen. Mm-hmm. It's just How deep does it happen? Is it just this PR push now and then it disappears into the You know, Sunset? Like, remember PBNs and they crack down on PBNs? Yep. And PBNs still work. Well, yeah, to a degree. Definitely. Like, if they're done right, they work.

ARTHUR: When they're done right. Yeah. But if it's done shit, then they'll get hit and then it won't be worth anything. True that. So, yeah, I guess time will tell, right? Like you said, we're in May 8th, so it's been a couple of days. We'll do a recap maybe in a couple of weeks time and see. What happens? You won't be here. Oh, I'll be here.

MICHAEL: Let's talk about that. So we're going to shift our publishing frequency to every, even though we haven't published for like four weeks, we're going to shift to a fortnightly publishing frequency over the Australian winter. So, um, we have a few episodes to come, but, um, I'll be away for some of that time. So Arthur may or may not fly solo, whether he can, um, operate or the equipment is to be determined. I don't have high hopes. Nah, may not. But yeah, we're going to shift nightly over the next sort of, up until about September. But we have a lot of stuff teed up and Arthur's committing right now that as data comes out on the Parasite SEO crackdown. That I'll do an update?

ARTHUR: He'll do an update. What if something epic happens when you're gone? You do it. Like something, like… Just get in here. Google disappears.

MICHAEL: Imagine. Well, you know what? One of the topics we're going to talk about in coming weeks is we've done a dive into using Google And then comparing those search terms on perplexity.ai, chatgpt and meta.ai to see how those experiences compare with Google across transactional terms, local service, informational terms. And are they Google killers or not? Well, time will tell because that's an episode we've got coming. And if something huge happens and Google does die, Arthur commits to coming on here and talking about it while I'm away. Otherwise, we'll be publishing every couple of weeks. But I reckon that's the potty for today. What about you? I've got nothing else of value to add.

ARTHUR: No, that was good. I don't know that you added much value. No, well, I haven't, to be honest, been keeping up with the Parasite SEO stuff.

MICHAEL: To be fair, this doesn't affect most people in the SEO world.

ARTHUR: No, we knew it was coming and they announced it months ago.

MICHAEL: If you're a good local business trying to rank for local keywords and the like, it means nothing to you, but it is interesting to stay across what Google's up to. That's what we've done, but we'll be back in about two weeks with another episode of the SEO Show. Until then, happy SEOing. Hooroo.

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