Bing Inorganic Site Structure Spam Penalties

Bing announced last night a new set of search penalties for inorganic site structure.iInorganic site structure includes PBNs and link networks, doorways and duplicate content, subdomain or subfolder leasing and spammy web hosts and hacked sites.

Here is Frédéric Dubut from the Bing search quality team announcing it on Twitter:

Some of it is based directly on the feedback we received from you earlier this year. We would love to hear your feedback. https://t.co/6HDZ1QNofb

— Frédéric Dubut (@CoperniX) November 4, 2019

How severe are these penalties? Well, to adjust the rankings down enough to put them on an equal playing field:

These penalties are meant to nullify undeserved signals, not to obliterate a site. If the site is considered among the most relevant for our users and deserves to rank high on its own merits, then it will.

— Frédéric Dubut (@CoperniX) November 5, 2019

How is that good for users? Do users get a better deal or higher discounts? The main counterpoint we’ve heard to penalizing subdomain leasing is that these subdomains are providing value, so I’m trying to understand the value added of these sites vs. other dedicated sites.

— Frédéric Dubut (@CoperniX) November 5, 2019

These are good points and things we do look for before applying a penalty. Is the content on the subdomain vetted, or even better curated by the site owner? Is the subdomain well integrated in the main site? Unfortunately, in most of these cases, the answer is no and no.

— Frédéric Dubut (@CoperniX) November 5, 2019

I’m not going to pass a judgment on any specific site but most of the sites that we reviewed before signing off on this policy (including most of these white-label coupon sites) are clear “no and no”, which is why we’re implementing this policy in the first place.

— Frédéric Dubut (@CoperniX) November 5, 2019

Here is each one broken down by Bing.

PBNs: Private Blog Networks are when domains artificially split across many different domains, all cross-linking to one another, for the obvious purpose of rank boosting:

Doorways: Doorways are pages that are overly optimized for specific search queries, but which only redirect or point users to a different destination. The typical situation is someone spinning up many different sites hosted under different domain names, each targeting its own set of search queries but all redirecting to the same destination or hosting the same content.

Subdomain or subfolder leasing: The practice of hosting third-party content or letting a third party operate a designated subdomain or subfolder, generally in exchange for compensation.

You can learn more about these in the Bing blog post.

The big question is – did any of you notice ranking declines because of these tactics?

Forum discussion at Twitter.