Google Drops Spam Policy Demotions for European Publishers

Google has announced that it will no longer demote European publishers under its spam policy from Sunday. The change is in response to a European Commission investigation into whether Google's site reputation abuse policy unfairly targets legitimate revenue streams for news organizations.

The policy, which targets 'parasite SEO,' aims to prevent the practice of parking third-party content on an established domain to inherit the host's authority in search results. However, publishers have argued that this enforcement mechanism has caught innocent parties, such as those with sponsored sections or affiliate reviews.

Google has maintained that its priority is to keep Search results helpful and useful for users and protect them from deceptive practices like 'parasite SEO' spam. While the company has not softened its view on the underlying behavior, it has agreed to change the enforcement mechanism rather than the principle.

The stakes are high, as a breach of the Digital Markets Act can carry fines of up to 10% of a company's global annual turnover. Alphabet, Google's parent company, is estimated to have a number large enough that a policy carve-out looks cheap.