Google Adjusts EU Spam Policy to Avoid Antitrust Fine

Google has updated its spam policy in Europe to address concerns that could have led to an antitrust fine. The change is aimed at avoiding a potential penalty under the Digital Markets Act, which can result in fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover for DMA breaches.

The company's previous policy targeted 'parasite SEO,' where third-party pages are published on a site in an attempt to abuse search rankings. Publishers complained that Google's spam policy demoted news media and other publishers' websites in search results, particularly when those sites include content from commercial partners.

As of August 30, manual actions taken to demote sites under the old policy will no longer apply to users in the European Economic Area, which includes the 27 EU nations, Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein. The updated policy aims to avoid an investigation by the European Commission, the EU's competition enforcer.