Forbes Dodges Site Reputation Abuse Penalty

March 11, 2025

Woof. Tough day. Good day but tough day. 3,000 meetings and really intense physical therapy.

But I’m not breaking this publishing streak LFG!!!

SECTION

Forbes DGAF, Changes One Little Thing, Ranks

Today’s content comes from a Twitter video and is about how one might go about skirting the site reputation abuse penalty.

The Quick Summary:

In [some date I cannot check because Ahrefs is down or something], Forbes was smacked by the site reputation abuse policy, and lost traffic that generated them tens and tens of millions of dollars in affiliate income per year.

But now, but changing the author of the content and nothing else, they seem to be making a comeback in the SERPs (small, but steadily rising).

The Main Thing:

This quick video from Charles Floate shows that Forbes is making a comeback with this one simple change… and it is:

getting rid of the disposable author from whatever money-stuffed-in-the-pockets-of-every-jacket agency Forbes was working with to run up their big affiliate play and replacing the author with an on-staff author.

Thaaaaaaat’s it. That’s it, all the rest of the content is the same.

My Take:

Kind of funny — Forbes just can’t stop trying to skirt the site reputation abuse penalty they were handed.

And Google just can’t stop trying to rank Forbes.

It’s like Romeo and Juliet but instead of dying they just keep going

“IDK, what do YOU want for dinner?”

for eternity.

Sometimes you overthink SEO.

And sometimes you’re a DR one million and Google just can’t quit you so you can do what you want…

🤷‍♂️

Sometimes it just do be like that…

~

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Until next time…

sean

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