Common patterns
- Unrelated commercial topics published in rapid succession
- Very high proportion of external commercial links
- Thin or generic author profiles
- Category structure that does not match a coherent audience
- Organic traffic concentrated in strange or unrelated topics
- Pages that appear templated around exact-match anchors
What is not automatically suspicious
Accepting contributors, publishing sponsored content or covering multiple categories does not by itself make a publication low quality. Legitimate sites can do all three. The question is whether there is a genuine editorial product underneath.
Inspect recent history
Review a meaningful sample of recent articles rather than the homepage alone. Publishing patterns become easier to see across time.
Use the full checklist
Pair these checks with publisher vetting and traffic evaluation.