In January 2025, Google made updates to its algorithm that place penalties onto websites with scaled content abuse. If a website violates Google’s Scaled Content Abuse Spam Policy, they will fall further down in search rankings, which can significantly lower traffic and conversion numbers. Luckily, the team at Beyond Indigo Pets is here to help you understand this latest update, and how to avoid abusing scaled content on your veterinary website.

What Is Scaled Content Abuse?

Scaled content abuse occurs when multiple pages are added to a website to try to trick search engines into increasing rankings instead of offering something valuable to website users. Scaled content abuse is a numbers game about having a high volume of content that provides no real value to users. It doesn’t matter how it’s created; if Google considers it scaled content, it is going to penalize a website. Some examples of scaled content include:

AI Hurting Your SEO

Creating new pages with generative AI tools that are full of content, but don’t really provide anything new or interesting to a user can damage your veterinary SEO efforts.

Content Scraping from Other Sites

Google definitely frowns upon grabbing content from other websites and putting it onto a website to try to outsmart a search engine. This can include republishing content from other sites without adding any original content or value. Copying content from other sites, and modifying it only slightly before republishing it would also fall into this category. Reproducing content feeds from other sites without providing some type of unique benefit to the user, or creating sites dedicated to embedding or compiling content, such as videos, images, or other media from other sites, without substantial added value to the user will also be penalized.

Combined Content from Other Sites

Combining content from other websites without adding any added analysis or providing context is another example of scaled content abuse that Google will flag and punish. This can include building a page that only links to outside sources without any context, and simply summarizes a variety of articles without any original thought or analysis, or building a page of images collected from other sites without any editing, or creating a page dedicated to keyword stuffing.

AI Hurting Your Search Results

Creating content with AI tools that has not been edited or checked for context by a human will negatively impact your website and potentially decrease its ranking on a search engine results page (SERP).

How Google Punishes Sites that Abuse Scaled Content

There are a variety of ways Google could punish a website it determines is abusing scaled content. These include:

• Moving the site down in search results
• Removing the site completely from features like Top Search or Discover
• Completely removing the sites from search results
• Manual action that results in a drop on a SERP
• Limiting visibility to the offending section of a website

Avoiding Scaled Content Abuse Violations

High-quality content is always going to be your best bet when it comes to new website pages. This content should be original, and should provide important information for your website users. If you get asked a question repeatedly in your veterinary practice, for example, it can be helpful to write a blog that answers the question. This kind of content will help your website perform well on search engines. Avoid over-producing content with no informational value just to update your website content. Some things to consider with content creation are:

• User Value: Every piece of content should offer something informative or interesting to your audience.
• Human Creation: Avoid using AI tools to generate your content or you might get a bad reputation from Google.
• Relevance: All of your content should be relevant to your website’s desired purpose (i.e. veterinary care).
• Intention: Avoid putting third-party content on your website without any added analysis or value. If you do use third-party content, be sure to cite it and to add some more context or analysis to it.
• Search Console Review: Regularly monitoring your Google Search Console can let you know if you’ve gotten any manual actions or spam policy notifications from Google.
• Manual Actions: If you do receive a manual action, be sure to remove the offending content from your website.

We’re Here to Help

At Beyond Indigo Pets, we keep up with the latest changes to Google’s algorithm so you don’t have to. Our dedicated team of marketing strategists will regularly review your website and content to ensure it’s doing the most to attract new clients. Click here to get started.