"Site reputation policy" manual action: third-party content on your domain

What counts, and what does not

Third-party content on its own is fine. Google lists examples that are not inconsistent with the policy: wire services and press releases, syndicated news, forums and comment sections, columns and opinion pieces, advertorials promoted to your own readers rather than placed to rank, and pages with affiliate links or ad units where the links are treated appropriately.

The pattern that is inconsistent looks like this on WordPress sites:

• A /coupons/ or /deals/ folder run by an outside company under a revenue share.
• A "partner content" section of reviews for loans, casinos, CBD or essay services on a site about something else.
• White-label product roundups supplied in bulk and published with little editing.
• Freelance "sponsored" articles bought mainly for your domain's authority.

Google's reviewers ask whether the content was produced with enough input, oversight or contribution from you to be part of your site.

Your four options, per Google

Google lays out what you can do with the content it flagged:

1. Move it to a new domain. If you link from your site to the new one, use nofollow. Do not redirect the old URLs to the new domain, because redirecting may be inconsistent with the policy again.
2. Noindex it. In Hydrogen SEO, set noindex per post in the SEO Settings sheet, or for a whole custom post type under Hydrogen SEO → Robots. Do not also block the section in robots.txt, or Google cannot see the noindex tag.
3. Redo it as first-party content, written or substantially edited by your own staff.
4. Remove it, letting the URLs return 404 or 410.

The caution matters more than the options. Moving the content to a subdomain or subfolder of your own site "may be viewed as an attempt to circumvent" the policy and could lead to broader action. Moving it to another established site can create the same issue there.

The EEA difference

Google applies this policy differently for users in the European Economic Area. For results shown to users in the EEA, pages found inconsistent with the policy may be treated as separate from the main domain and ranked on their own merits, but they are not subject to the manual action's impact. Outside the EEA, the manual action applies as usual.

Google also notes that in the EEA, failing to take the steps above is not by itself considered an attempt to get around the policy. For sites in the EEA, Google describes a reconsideration process with a commitment to answer within a short timeframe and give more reasoning, and eligible sites can take disputes to mediation after a reconsideration request. If most of your audience is in Europe, read the current policy text carefully before deciding how much to change.

Requesting reconsideration

Use the list of affected patterns in the Search Console message or report to confirm you have dealt with every page. Then select Request Review and explain which option you chose for each section:

The /deals/ section (2,100 pages) was operated by a coupon partner
under a revenue share. We ended the agreement and removed the section;
URLs now return 410. Twelve product guides written by our staff that
lived in /deals/ were moved to /guides/ and edited in-house.
We no longer host partner-operated content.

Google informs you of the outcome in Search Console and by email. Timelines vary from days to weeks. Removing a coupon or casino section usually means losing the traffic it brought in, and Google makes no promise that the rest of the site gains anything from the cleanup; the goal is to lift the action, not to reclaim the rankings the third-party pages had.