Google Reveals How They Penalise Misinformation On The SERPs

SEO content should be reliable, relevant, and authentic, which is why the SEO community expressed their concerns about misinformation, especially in the medical search engine results pages (SERPs). For many in the industry, inaccurate information on the SERPs is considered as bad as spam content. Recently, Google's Danny Sullivan addressed these concerns by revealing how the company deals with SEO content writing - specifically on how they treat misinformation and spam content.

Spam content is known to give searchers a bad experience, which is why Google gives webmasters a penalty if they feed their readers spam content. With this in context, the search marketing community also compared misinformation to spam content, with both giving users a negative experience.

Google agrees that misinformation is also spam. In their Webmaster Guidelines, the company stated that falsified information is considered spam since it harms the experience of the user. Some examples of misinformation include a rich result that promotes travel packages as an event or showing false reviews.

On the other hand, a spam is when a user searches for a certain product or service or types in a specific query, and the search results take them to a content page that discusses irrelevant items.

Google updated its ranking algorithm systems to better support and fulfil the user's needs, which is to have their queries answered and to point them to the products and services that they are looking for. This means that Google wants to provide its searchers with the best websites that contain the best SEO content and offer a great user experience.

Therefore, if a website provides quality information, it is safe to say that it does not give a bad user experience. Poor websites that provide misleading information will be given penalties because they make for a bad user experience. Not only that, but they also lead searchers to believe that their content is right even though it isn't, especially in sensitive, medical-related websites.

In a tweet, Joe Hall, a member of the search marketing community, asked why Google does not severely punish websites that provide misleading information. He also expressed his dissatisfaction with the search engine company's algorithms like E-A-T, as they treat misinformation and spam differently.

Overall, Hall is concerned about the searcher's health, as misinformation, especially in the medical industry, can be harmful not only to the searcher's user experience but their well-being as well.

Google's Danny Sullivan replied to Hall's tweets, saying that Google is not ignoring misinformation. Instead, he assured that Google is committed to showing useful information on the SERPs.

According to him, Google is indeed fighting both spam and misinformation, but he made it clear that the search engine company does not do everything manually. While it's true that Google manually deals with spam in addition to automated protections, this is only a small part of the process.

Sullivan explained that there are millions of pages with misleading information, and there is no way for Google to review all the existing pages manually. Moreover, their algorithm systems have to deal with new thousands of queries in only a matter of seconds.

According to Sullivan, the best way to deal with this issue is to focus on quality ranking, meaning they reward websites that practice white hat SEO content writing. He also asserted that their automated systems can do a lot more to penalise spam and misinformation than taking manual action.

Google's algorithms penalise websites that do not provide a great user experience. So if your website contains spam and misleading information, you shouldn't expect to rank high on the SERPs. There are two types of penalties: a manual penalty, which is imposed by a member of the Google Quality Team, and an algorithmic penalty, which is automatic.

Here at Position1SEO, we make sure that your website does not get either of these penalties. We take time to thoroughly study your website, determining what it needs to improve to gain more buying customers through an SEO audit. Then, we will focus on creating quality content, optimising your webpages, and improving your website's overall user experience.

For queries about our SEO services, you can email office@position1seo.co.uk or dial 0141 846 0114. Work with us today!