Search Visibility
What Actually Gets You Demoted
Google publishes sixteen named spam policies. Almost none of the things people worry about are on the list, and three of the ones that are have quietly become the most common ways a legitimate business gets demoted. Knowing which of the sixteen you are actually exposed to is a shorter conversation than most SEO audits.
Start here
Which One Brought You
Three ways this arrives. The first decides whether the other two are even relevant.
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01
You think you have a penalty
Check Search Console for a manual action. If there is none, you do not have a penalty in the sense the word is normally used, and there is nothing to appeal.
Two different things called penalty -
02
You publish guest or partner content
The site reputation policy is the one most often broken by respectable businesses, and it is broken by arrangements that were signed as advertising rather than as SEO.
The three worth knowing -
03
Somebody suggested buying an old domain
Expired domain abuse is a named policy. The pitch usually describes it accurately and calls it something else.
What the policy says
The distinction
Two Different Things Are Called A Penalty
Before anything else, the word penalty is doing two jobs and only one of them is real.
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A manual action
A human at Google has reviewed the site and applied something. It appears in Search Console under Manual actions. It has a reason attached. It can be appealed through a reconsideration request, and Google says all sites will have the opportunity to address the issue or appeal.
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An algorithmic assessment
Systems assessed the site differently and the position changed. Nothing appears in Search Console because nothing was applied to you. There is no reason attached, and reconsideration does not apply because there is nothing to reconsider.
Do this before anything else
Check Search Console first, every time, before any other work. It takes a minute and it decides whether the rest of the investigation is about a rule you broke or about an assessment that moved. Treating the second as the first is how businesses spend months hunting for an infraction that does not exist.
The whole list
Sixteen Policies, And That Is All Of Them
The full published list, so you can see how short it is and how little of it applies to an ordinary business.
- Cloaking
- Doorway abuse
- Expired domain abuse
- Hacked content
- Hidden text and link abuse
- Keyword stuffing
- Link spam
- Machine generated traffic
- Malicious practices
- Misleading functionality
- Scaled content abuse
- Scraping
- Site reputation abuse
- Sneaky redirects
- Thin affiliation
- User generated spam
Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all.
Notice what is not on it. Slow pages are not on it. A low word count is not on it. Missing schema is not on it. Duplicate meta descriptions are not on it. A large share of what gets flagged in a paid audit as a risk is not a policy at all, and calling it one is a sales technique.
The ones that catch good businesses
Three Worth Reading Word For Word
Three of the sixteen are the ones that catch businesses who were not trying to game anything. Each is quoted in Google's own words, because each is routinely described to buyers as something else.
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Site reputation abuse
How it is usually described: Sold as a partnership, a content hub, a sponsored section, or renting out a subfolder to a specialist publisher. Often signed by a marketing team as advertising, with nobody in the room thinking about search at all.
Google
Applies where third-party content is published on a host site mainly because of that host's already-established ranking signals, which it has earned primarily from its first-party content.
What the test actually is: The test is why the content is there. If a third party is publishing on your domain principally to borrow the standing your own work earned, the arrangement is the thing the policy names, whatever the contract calls it. This is the one that catches established, respectable sites, because only an established site has standing worth borrowing.
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Expired domain abuse
How it is usually described: Sold as acquiring an aged domain with existing authority, or as a rebrand onto a stronger name. The pitch is often a perfectly accurate description of the policy with the word abuse removed.
Google
Expired domain name is purchased and repurposed primarily to manipulate search rankings by hosting content that provides little to no value to users.
What the test actually is: Two conditions and both matter: bought primarily to manipulate rankings, and carrying content of little value. Buying a domain because it is the right name for the business, and running a real business on it, is not this. Buying one for its backlinks and putting thin content on it is exactly this.
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Scaled content abuse
How it is usually described: Sold as programmatic SEO, location pages at scale, or content velocity. Increasingly sold as AI content production, though the policy is about scale and purpose rather than about who or what wrote it.
Google
Many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users. This abusive practice is typically focused on creating large amounts of unoriginal content that provides little to no value to users.
What the test actually is: The policy does not say generated by a machine. It says generated for the primary purpose of manipulating rankings, and unoriginal, and of little value. A thousand genuinely distinct location pages that each answer a real question are not this. A thousand pages differing only in a place name are, whoever wrote them.
One regional difference
If You Operate In Europe
One regional difference worth knowing if you operate in Europe.
What is different
Within the European Economic Area, Google says pages affected by the site reputation policy are categorised as separate from the main domain rather than being subject to a manual penalty. The practical effect on where the content ranks is similar. The mechanism, and therefore what you would be appealing, is not.
Your exposure
Five Questions, And Most Answers Are No
A short, honest exposure check. Five questions, and most businesses answer no to all five.
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01
Does anybody else publish on your domain?
Guest sections, sponsored areas, partner subfolders, a licensed comparison tool. If yes, ask why it is on your domain rather than theirs. If the honest answer involves your rankings, look at the site reputation policy.
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02
Did you buy the domain for its history?
If the reason it was chosen was existing links rather than the name being right, and the content on it now is thin, that is the shape of expired domain abuse.
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03
Are pages being produced from a template at volume?
Count how many differ only in one substituted variable. If most of them do, the volume is the problem rather than the writing.
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04
Has anybody bought links, ever?
Including a previous agency, including years ago, including a package described as digital PR that turned out to be paid placements.
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05
Is there anything in Search Console under Manual actions?
The only question with a definite answer. Check it before assuming anything, and check it before paying for an audit that assumes something.
Questions
The Ones That Keep Coming Up
Search Console, under Manual actions. A manual action is a decision a person made about your site and it is listed there with a reason. If nothing is listed, nothing has been applied to you, and what you are looking at is an algorithmic assessment rather than a penalty.
Not in itself. The scaled content abuse policy is about pages generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings, unoriginal, and of little value to users. It describes purpose and quality rather than authorship. Google has separately published guidance on generative AI content that says the same thing.
It depends entirely on why it is on your domain. The policy applies where third party content is published on a host site mainly because of the host's already established ranking signals. If the partner would get the same commercial outcome publishing on their own site, it is probably fine. If the value of the arrangement is your standing, that is the thing the policy names.
Yes. Google says all sites will have the opportunity to address the issue or appeal, through a reconsideration request. Fix the thing first: a reconsideration request filed before the problem is actually resolved spends the review and comes back rejected.
No. Neither is on the list of sixteen. They may be worth improving on their own merits, but presenting them as a policy risk is not accurate.
For the site reputation policy, yes in mechanism. Google says that within the European Economic Area, affected pages are categorised as separate from the main domain rather than being subject to a manual penalty.
Where this came from
Every Quote On This Page
Google Search Central, checked against the live pages on 10 September 2026.
- Spam policies for Google web search The list of sixteen, every definition quoted above, and the consequences.
- Manual Actions report Where an actual penalty appears, and how a reconsideration request works.
- Google Search guidance on AI generated content What Google says about how content was produced, as against what it is for.
Not sure which of the sixteen applies to you?
The exposure check above is genuinely most of it. If you want somebody to go through it with you and read the arrangements you already have, that is a short conversation with a definite answer at the end.
