Google Revises Spam Policy Under EU Pressure

Google has revised its site reputation abuse policy in response to pressure from the European Union (EU) under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The policy change affects users in the European Economic Area (EEA), where Google will no longer apply manual demotions to sites that engage in parasite search engine optimization (SEO).

The EU had been investigating whether Google's policy unfairly harmed news publishers and their business options. The investigation was prompted by concerns that the policy would negatively impact news media websites and other publishers.

Google says that affected site sections may rank separately over time instead of lowering the whole site's ranking. However, this change only applies in the EEA, and sites violating the policy can still be ranked lower elsewhere.