Forbes is cutting ties with freelance writers, citing Google spam policies

Forbes will indefinitely stop using freelance workers to write certain types of stories, blaming the change on a recent update to Google’s search policies.

In recent days, Forbes The company said it will stop hiring freelance workers to produce content for its product review section, Forbes Vetted, according to a reporter who writes for the site. In a note shared with edge, Edited at Forbes Quote Google’s Website Reputation Abuse Policy For a change.

Website reputation abuse (also known as parasite SEO) is when a website publishes a large amount of non-branded or irrelevant content to take advantage of the main website’s ranking power and reputation in Google searches. Typically, users browsing the site won’t notice this free riding. (Example: those weird coupon code sections on newspaper websites that pop up via search engines but aren’t highlighted on the homepage.) Sometimes this spam is caused by Third Party Marketing Company These companies are contracted to produce large amounts of easily searchable content.

Forbes did not respond to multiple requests for comment. It’s unclear what other parts Forbes The pause extends to. Screenplay by Cassandra Brooklyn descriptive I received similar news last week.

Many news outlets (including edge) hires freelancers to write and report stories. but Forbes There are a large number of external contributors who publish content on their website. Many of these writers are legitimate journalists who produce unbiased, in-depth reporting. But there are also this Forbes contributor networka group of thousands of marketers, CEOs, and other outside experts who can publish questionable content within a trusted framework Forbes Name.

Some of the editorial content on the site may have drawn the ire of Google, which has been targeting search engine-first content on the web. November, Google Further tightening of rules around parasite SEOspecifically addressing the “third-party” nature of such content.

“Our evaluation of numerous cases shows that no amount of first-party involvement changes the fundamental third-party nature of the content or the unfair, exploitative nature of attempts to exploit ranking signals from host sites,” the company said. Wrote In a blog post.

Like other testing and review sites, Forbes Vetted You’ll earn money every time a reader makes a purchase using links in your Shop articles. One writer who learned of the freelance hiatus said the editing process for their past stories was rigorous—they tested the product, went through multiple rounds of edits, and interviewed sources. Apart from pauses in work, the author Be told that some of their stories may need to be completely re-reported and re-published by internal staff.

“They clearly invested significant resources in Forbes review,” the author said. “The big product reviews I did were $3,000 apiece, which was a lot of money, and then I’d say, ‘Oh, we’ve got to have people rewrite this all in-house.'”

Google’s spam policy states that the presence of freelance content does not in itself violate the Site Reputation Abuse Policy – only if the content is also intended to Leverage your website’s ranking signals. Google spokesman Davis Thompson directed edge Go to FAQ section Describe the freelance worker policy.