Logins or paywalls on otherwise trustworthy sites should not be considered untrustworthy, deceptive, or coercive. Many high quality sites such as newspapers or magazines cannot exist without monetization through subscriptions and paywalls. Some types of MC should be login protected, such as pages with personal information online banking websites or private pages on social network websites. MC may be inaccessible for non-deliberate or non-coercive reasons, such as content that doesn't load or content that is unavailable in a country or region. These are not reasons for Lowest . Use your judgment to assess whether the page is designed to manipulate or coerce users into taking actions that benefit the website. If you are unsure, look at other pages on the same website, conduct reputation research, etc. Remember many websites need monetization to share content with users. The presence of Ads alone is not enough for Lowest . One possible distinguishing factor for Lowest is deliberate design of the website to manipulate or coerce people into engaging with monetization or Ads rather than the MC. 7.4.5 Suspected Malicious Behavior It may be difficult to prove that a page causes harm without experiencing harm yourself. For this reason, you may use the Lowest rating if you strongly suspect a page is malicious or harmful even without having proof. Any of the following should be considered untrustworthy: ● Pages or websites that you strongly suspect are scams (see these links for more information about Internet scams: Avoid Scams 1, Avoid Scams 2, Internet Fraud). ● Pages that ask for personal information without a legitimate reason (for example, pages that ask for name, birthdate, address, bank account, government ID number, etc.). ● Pages that appear to <phish= for passwords to Facebook, Gmail, or other popular online services. See here for information about <phishing= fraud. ● Pages with links that you suspect are malware downloads. Important : Do not continue to interact with the page if you observe these characteristics. If you do click on a link and encounter a malware warning from your browser or antivirus software (example), please do not continue to that page. You can assume that the page is malicious for the purpose of rating and use Lowest . Note that not all warnings your browser may display are related to malware (e.g., other types of browser warnings include certificate acceptance requests, content filtering warnings, etc.). If you are unsure or hesitant to continue to the page for any reason, you can release the task. 7.5 Spammy Webpages Remember that pages and websites should exist for the benefit of people who visit the website. There are many types of webpages that can benefit visitors, such as online shopping or banking services, videos offering entertainment, or personal pages sharing a perspective or experience. Some of these pages depend on advertising and monetization to maintain the website and create high quality content while still benefiting visitors. However, some pages are created to benefit the website owner or other organizations and with little to no attention paid to the experience of the people who visit. When such pages use deceptive techniques to appear near the top of search results, it may disincentivize the creation of high quality content by crowding out pages created with time, effort, expertise or original content that is helpful for visitors. This section describes characteristics of spam or spam-like pages that should be rated Lowest . In general, spam sites attempt to game their way to the top of search results through a variety of techniques such as repeating keywords over and over, or showing search engines content that's different from what visitors to the site will see. Hackers sometimes even get into legitimate sites and change them into spam sites that redirect people to scams or worse. The Google Search Central Webmaster Quality Guidelines is a good reference for non-webmasters to learn more about different spam techniques. If you recognize any of these spam techniques on a page, please use the Lowest rating. Copyright 2022 50
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