Google Changes EU Spam Policy Amid Antitrust Concerns Over Publisher Penalties

Google has changed its site reputation abuse policy in Europe following concerns from European Union regulators that the search giant’s approach could unfairly penalise publishers and potentially expose the company to a major antitrust fine.

Alphabet-owned Google said Friday that, from August 30, manual actions taken under its site reputation abuse policy to demote websites would no longer apply to users in the European Economic Area (EEA), covering the 27 EU member states as well as Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

The policy will remain unchanged outside the EEA, Google said.

The move follows complaints from publishers over Google's policy targeting what is commonly known as parasite SEO a practice in which third-party content is published on an established website in an attempt to benefit from the site's search-ranking signals.

EU Raises Concerns Over Publisher Demotions

The European Commission said its monitoring had found that Google's spam policy could result in news organisations and other publishers being demoted in search results when they hosted content produced by commercial partners.

EU officials argued that the approach could disadvantage legitimate publishers simply because their websites contained third-party material.

Thomas Regnier, a spokesperson for the European Commission, welcomed Google's decision, saying the policy had unfairly penalised publishers and other businesses using Google Search.

"Thanks to the DMA, Google Search will no longer demote press publications solely for hosting third-party content," Regnier said.

The Commission said it would continue monitoring how Google implements the revised policy to determine whether it complies with European competition rules.

Investigation Under the Digital Markets Act

The dispute had prompted the European Commission to open an investigation under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the EU's landmark legislation designed to regulate the market power of major technology companies.

The DMA imposes a range of obligations on designated "gatekeeper" platforms, including requirements aimed at ensuring fairer competition and preventing dominant technology companies from using their market position to disadvantage competitors or business users.

Google's search engine is among the services subject to the EU's digital competition framework.

The Commission's investigation created the possibility of significant financial consequences if Google were found to have breached the DMA.

Under the legislation, companies found in violation can face fines of up to 10% of their total worldwide annual turnover.

What the Policy Change Means

Google's decision specifically applies to manual actions under the site reputation abuse policy within the EEA.

The underlying concern centres on how search rankings are affected when websites host content from external commercial partners.

Google introduced its site reputation abuse policy to combat attempts to manipulate search rankings by using the authority and ranking signals of established websites.

However, publishers argued that legitimate partnerships and commercially produced content could be caught by the policy, potentially causing their websites or individual pages to lose visibility in Google Search.

The European Commission's intervention has now led Google to create a regional exception for the EEA.

For publishers operating in Europe, the change could reduce the risk of being manually demoted solely because their websites host third-party content.

Google, however, will continue applying the existing policy in other markets.

Google Faces Continued EU Scrutiny

The policy change is the latest example of how European regulators are using the DMA to challenge practices at major technology companies.

The European Commission said it would monitor Google's implementation of the new approach rather than immediately closing the matter.

The development also highlights the growing tension between Google's efforts to protect the quality of its search results and publishers' concerns over their dependence on the world's dominant search engine for traffic.

For European publishers, the policy change could provide greater certainty when working with commercial content partners. For Google, it represents another adjustment to its search practices as the company navigates increasingly strict regulatory oversight in Europe.