If your website has been verified within a Google Search Console account, you can access the Abusive Experience Report within the Tools menu, and hopefully for most websites, this reports the status as ‘Not Reviewed’. However, if Google has identified issues with a site, then the findings are shown here and you have the chance to fix them.
An ‘abusive experience’ in Google terms is something designed to mislead website visitors, such as auto-redirects that take visitors to a new page without any action on their part, or ads that are designed to mislead or trick users into interacting with them.
The Abusive Experiences Report lists experiences on your site that are identified as being misleading to your visitors. By removing them, you may increase your visitors’ enjoyment of your site and the likelihood they’ll return. You’ll also help improve the overall health of the online ecosystem and give your site a better reputation within Google’s index and ranking system.
If your site has been reviewed, and the status is shown as “Failing,” the Abusive Experience Report shows examples of experiences that Google found on your site that may be misleading your visitors. For each listed experience, there is a brief definition shown, the URL of the page where the experience was found and, when available, images and/or a short video that shows you how it actually looked on your site.
Once you’ve determined the cause of the abusive experience, you should fix the issue. When you’re done fixing all abusive experiences, you can then request another review of your site by Google to get cleared from the ‘Failing’ setting.
This report is another reason to ensure that your website is verified in the Google Search Console to enable this communication with Google about potential issues that could be impacting your site in Google’s search results. Hopefully your website will not experience any of these issues, but if it does, you have the chance to fix them.
If you’d like to know more about Google Search Console and the reports available for your website, please contact us.