Overview
- Google announced on Friday that, starting August 30, manual search demotion actions under its site reputation/spam policy will not apply to users in the European Economic Area.
- The change is limited to the EEA (the 27 EU member states plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein) and Google will continue to apply the same spam enforcement outside that region.
- EU monitoring and publisher complaints had found Google’s site reputation rules sometimes demoted legitimate news and publisher pages that host third‑party or commercial content, a practice linked to so‑called parasite SEO.
- The European Commission opened a DMA investigation into the policy and reporting of an €890 million fine in July increased pressure on Google to alter enforcement to avoid larger or recurring penalties.
- For publishers, the carve‑out could restore visibility for pages with partner or sponsored content, while the wider issue raises new questions about how dominant platforms must balance anti‑spam tools with DMA rules on fair treatment.