Hajra Naz
Google’s Martin Splitt recently addressed concerns about website trustworthiness and the impact of competitors on it. He clarified how Google evaluates site trustworthiness and dispelled the notion that factors like links or traffic could negatively influence Google’s perception.
Trustworthiness
While Google’s research papers and patents discuss website trustworthiness, there is no specific “trust metric” used by Google. Instead, multiple signals collectively indicate a site’s trustworthiness, but these are not part of a single trust algorithm. When Googlers refer to a site’s trustworthiness, they are simply evaluating its overall reliability without overcomplicating it.
Can Competitors Affect Trustworthiness?
A question was raised about whether competitors could damage a site’s reputation by sending spam or fake traffic to it, potentially making it seem untrustworthy to Google.
This concern may stem from the misconception that Google uses click metrics to rank pages. In reality, most research on clicks is related to validating search results rather than ranking. Click data is more about quality assurance than ranking.
The specific question asked was:
“Should I be worried about bad actors making our site look untrustworthy by sending spam or fake traffic, given that site trustworthiness is considered binary?”
In this context, “binary” implies that a site is either trustworthy or untrustworthy with no in-between.
Martin Splitt downplayed the notion of trustworthiness being binary and firmly stated that traffic from dubious sources does not affect how Google views a site. He emphasized:
“It’s not binary. Simply sending traffic from questionable sources won’t ‘taint’ a site.”
According to Martin, spam or fake traffic does not impact a site’s trustworthiness. Instead, a site’s inherent spammy behavior, such as hosting malware, is what affects its reputation. External factors like the origin of traffic or links do not influence Google’s judgment of a site’s trustworthiness.
He further explained:
“If a site engages in shady practices like spamming or hosting malware, that’s a problem. However, the source of traffic or links does not affect how Google assesses a site’s trustworthiness.”
Bot Traffic and Trustworthiness
It’s common for websites to encounter high levels of bot traffic, including hackers probing for vulnerabilities or bots hitting non-existent pages. Given that all sites experience this, Martin’s point about third parties being unable to damage a site’s reputation by sending fake traffic is understandable. Every site deals with low-quality inbound links and bot traffic, so these factors do not influence how Google views a site.
