Google Drops Site Reputation Policy Enforcement in Europe

Google has announced that it will not enforce its Site Reputation Policy manual actions in the European Economic Area (EEA) due to a mandate set by the European Commission, effective August 30, 2026.

The policy aims to prevent site reputation abuse, where third-party content is published on a host site primarily because of that host's established ranking signals. This tactic allows the content to rank better than it could otherwise on its own.

Google began enforcing this policy in Europe in January 2025 as part of its efforts to combat parasite SEO.

However, due to the European Commission's mandate, Google will not apply manual actions under this policy for searchers within the EEA. This means that sites with manual actions applied under the site reputation policy will have a different effect for those searching in the EEA than outside of it.