Google Webmaster Guidelines Update Calls “Low Quality Guest Blog Posts” Spam

Google has updated their webmaster guidelines, specifically in the little or no original content guideline, to add “low-quality guest blog posts” as an example of “scraped content.”

Brian Ussery first spotted this change, noting how Google has been fighting the use of guest blogging and posting around link building. Specifically when Google’s head of search spam said guest blogging is done for SEO purposes.

Since then, Google has penalized several guest blog networks and continues to set their targets on low-quality guest blogging that aims at manipulating their search results.

Here is a screen shot of the guidelines page before the change:

Here is a screen shot of the guidelines page after the change: