Google Relents on Spam Rules in Europe Amid DMA Fine Threat

Google has softened its stance on spam rules in Europe to avoid facing a fine under the Digital Markets Act. The company will no longer apply manual actions that demote websites for site reputation abuse policy to users searching from the European Economic Area, including the 27 EU member states, Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein.

This change is effective from August 30th and follows a European Commission investigation into Google's policies. The inquiry was prompted by complaints from publishers that the rule stripped them of traffic and revenue.

The policy targets 'parasite SEO,' where third-party pages are published on an established site to borrow its ranking signals. Breaches of the Digital Markets Act can cost a company up to 10% of its global annual turnover, which for Alphabet is tens of billions of dollars.