Google Updates Spam Policy in Europe to Avoid Antitrust Fine

Google has updated its spam policy in an attempt to avoid an antitrust fine in the European Union. The update, which took effect on August 30, will exempt users in the EU and a few other countries from manual actions taken under Google's site reputation policy.

The policy change only applies within the European Economic Area (EEA), where companies found in breach of the Digital Markets Act could face penalties of up to 10% of their global annual turnover. Outside the EEA, Google's site reputation policy remains unchanged.

Google defines site reputation abuse as when third-party content is published on a host site mainly to take advantage of the search ranking it has earned primarily from its first-party content. This practice is commonly referred to as 'parasite SEO'. Examples of site reputation abuse include an educational site hosting sponsored reviews of payday loans written by a third party, and a medical site hosting low-quality advertising pages.

The EU's investigation into Google found that the company's algorithm and manual actions deliberately lowered the search rankings of legitimate news outlets and publishers whenever their platforms featured sponsored commercial partner content. This led to complaints from publishers about Google's site reputation policy, which ultimately prompted an update to avoid an antitrust fine.