Thanks to the power of Forbes' long-standing and well-linked site, Forbes Marketplace/Advisor has dominated the search term “best CBD gummies” for “an eternity,” according to SEO analyst Lily Ray. Forbes has similarly dominated “best pet insurance” and long emerged as the No. 2 result for “how to get rid of cockroaches,” as described in a blog post by Lars Lofgren. If people click on this high-ranking result and then click a link to purchase a product or request a cockroach removal consultation, Forbes typically receives a discount.
Forbes Marketplace had also apparently provided SEO-focused review services to CNN and USA Today, as described by Lofgren. Lofgren's term for this company, “Parasite SEO,” took hold in corners critical of the trend. Ars has contacted Forbes for comment and will update this post with a response.
“The unfair, exploitative nature” of “parasitic SEO”
Google writes that it has “explored situations where there might be varying degrees of first-party involvement” (most publisher review sites indicate some type of oversight or editorial standards associated with the primary site). But no matter how it is arranged, “no amount of first-party involvement will change the fundamental nature of the third-party content or the unfair, exploitative nature of attempts to take advantage of the host sites' ranking signals.”
Therefore, using third party content in a way that benefits from high search quality, outside of the site's primary focus, is considered spam. That delivers a big blow to a site's Google ranking, and the impact is already being felt.
The SEO realignment does not affect more established types of third-party content, such as newsletters, syndication, or well-marked sponsored content, as described in Google's spam policy on site reputation abuse. As seen on the SEO subreddit and on social media, Google has given sites that violate the updated policy a “Manual Action” instead of relying solely on the algorithm to detect the often opaque schemes.
