Site reputation and expired domain abuse
Short answer
The site reputation policy covers third-party content placed on a host site mainly to exploit its ranking signals; third-party content alone is fine. Since August 2026, such pages in the EEA may be ranked separately instead of getting a manual action. Expired domain abuse repurposes an expired domain for low-value content.
Site reputation policy
Section titled “Site reputation policy”When Google reviews a case, it looks at how far the host controls the content. It checks whether design, formatting and quality are consistent with the main site. It also checks whether authorship and editorial responsibility are clear.
Different enforcement inside the EEA
Section titled “Different enforcement inside the EEA”Google also lifted earlier manual actions under this policy for EEA results. It states that neither the categorization nor a past manual action is used as a ranking signal.
Expired domain abuse
Section titled “Expired domain abuse”Why it matters for AI search
Section titled “Why it matters for AI search”Google’s spam policies apply to all of Google Search, including generative AI responses (Google Search AI feature changes). Placing content on high-authority third-party sites to get into AI answers runs into the same policy as it does for ranking.