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Here is a new question I have never seen asked before; does Google downgrade the search rankings of web sites that receive FTC warning letters about their medical and health content. The answer is no, not that I know of, but it is interesting that someone asked the question.
Daniel Dessinger a writer at the natural health site Mommypotamus asked John Mueller of Google if Google has some sort of ranking penalty for sites that get these letters from the Federal Trade Commission. John really had no clue what these FTC letters were, neither did I until I Googled it. So I would assume, Google has no penalty for this.
If you look, the FTC published the list which seems to have been issued to ~400 companies and counting. The Federal Trade Commission has sent warning letters to companies allegedly selling unapproved products that may violate federal law by making deceptive or scientifically unsupported claims about their ability to treat or cure coronavirus (COVID-19). The Commission also has sent warning letters to multi-level marketers regarding health and earnings claims they or their participants are making related to coronavirus. These efforts started last April but no, Google did not seem to need to take any specific action as far as I heard. I am not sure they needed to?
Here are the tweets:
I don't think Google would know. It might be that there's some coincidental overlap with what our algorithms look out for, and what the FTC looks out for, but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be by design. (I don't know anything about the FTC process.)
— 🌠John 🌠(@JohnMu) March 23, 2021
What FTC warning letter are you referring to? I feel like I'm missing something obvious :).
— 🌠John 🌠(@JohnMu) March 23, 2021
FTC publishes warning letters for all to see. Some health niche websites wrote articles related to COVID treatments in 2020 and were issued warning letters with a 48 hr timeline to revise content.
— Daniel Dessinger (@danieldessinger) March 23, 2021
I doubt Google is using these letters in its ranking algorithm but maybe it makes sense to. Or maybe's EAT stuff is good at sniffing out these types of websites anyway?
A bit more from John after I posted this:
I looked at some examples afterwards to even understand what it is. A lot of the examples I saw while looking around were pretty bad, and I'd hope we catch some of the associated signals for search.
— 🌠John 🌠(@JohnMu) March 25, 2021
Forum discussion at Twitter.
