Alphabet’s Google has announced a change in its search spam enforcement policy across Europe to resolve regulatory concerns and head off potential antitrust penalties. The move follows complaints from news media and digital publishers who found their websites demoted under Google’s “site reputation abuse” rules—a policy designed to combat “parasite SEO,” where third-party commercial content leverages a reputable host site’s search ranking signals to boost visibility.
The European Commission launched an investigation into the matter under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which equips EU competition enforcers to penalize non-compliant tech firms up to 10 percent of their global annual turnover. EU monitoring revealed that Google’s aggressive demotions were disproportionately harming legitimate publishers hosting partner content. In response to the scrutiny, Google confirmed that starting August 30, manual actions enforced under the site reputation policy will operate under a split model depending on user location.
For search users within the 27 EU member states, Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein, manual action demotions will no longer apply in the traditional sense. Instead of outright demoting the affected commercial sections, Google’s systems will isolate those sections so they rank independently from the main site’s overall domain authority over time. For users outside the European Economic Area, the standard enforcement remains unchanged, directly demoting the offending portions of the website.
While Google expressed ongoing concern that broad interpretations of the DMA might hinder its ability to safeguard search integrity, the company believes this dual-enforcement framework strikes a balance between regulatory compliance and user experience. Publishers facing manual actions will continue to receive Search Console notifications, retain the standard reconsideration process, and gain access to third-party mediation options within the European Economic Area.
