Google will stop applying manual actions that demote websites for site reputation abuse across the European Economic Area.
The change follows an EU investigation into whether the policy unfairly affected publishers hosting third-party content.
Google said the policy will remain unchanged outside the European Economic Area.
Google Tweaks Search Spam Rules In Europe After EU Antitrust Probe
Google has changed its site reputation abuse policy in Europe after an EU investigation raised concerns that the search penalty could violate the bloc’s digital competition rules
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Alphabet-owned Google has changed its search spam policy in Europe after EU regulators raised concerns that the measure could lead to an antitrust fine, according to a Reuters report.
The company’s site reputation abuse policy targets the practice of placing third-party pages on a website to take advantage of the host site’s search-ranking signals. The practice is commonly known as “parasite SEO”.
The European Commission had raised concerns after its monitoring found that Google’s policy could demote news media and other publishers in search results when their websites carried content from commercial partners.
Google Changes Search Policy In EEA
Google said that from August 30, manual actions taken to demote websites under the policy will not apply to users in the 27 European Union countries, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, which together make up the European Economic Area.
The company added that the policy will remain unchanged outside the European Economic Area.
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The move comes after publishers raised concerns about the site reputation abuse policy and its impact on websites carrying third-party content.
EU Had Opened Digital Markets Act Probe
The European Commission had opened an investigation under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which is designed to limit the market power of large technology companies, according to the report.
The EU said its concerns centred on the impact of Google’s policy on press publications and other publishers that host content from commercial partners.
“We welcome the repeal of this policy, which unfairly penalised publishers and other business users of Google Search,” EU Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said, as quoted by the news agency. Regnier added that the Commission would monitor the application of Google’s new policy to ensure it complies with the DMA.
Violations of the DMA can result in fines of up to 10% of a company’s global annual turnover, making the EU probe a significant regulatory issue for Google.
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