Google Tweaks Spam Policy Amid EU Antitrust Scrutiny
Google has revised its spam policy in Europe to address concerns that could have led to an antitrust fine. The move comes after EU regulators began investigating Alphabet's subsidiary, Google, over allegations that its site reputation abuse policy was harming news media and other publishers' websites.
The issue revolves around the practice of publishing third-party pages on a site to exploit search rankings through parasite SEO. According to the EU, Google's spam policy demoted these sites in search results when they included commercial content from partners.
From August 30, manual actions taken to demote sites will no longer apply to users in the 27 European Union nations, Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein, which make up the European Economic Area. The change does not affect other regions outside this area.
The Digital Markets Act, aimed at reining in Big Tech's power, prompted the investigation into Google's policy. Breaches of the DMA can result in fines of up to 10% of a company's global annual turnover.