Google Changes Spam Policy In Europe To Address EU Antitrust Concerns

Google will change its search spam enforcement in Europe to address concerns raised by European Union regulators over its site reputation abuse policy, Reuters reported.

From August 30, Google will stop applying manual search demotions under the policy to content and queries within the European Economic Area (EEA), covering the 27 EU member states along with Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. The policy was introduced to tackle “parasite SEO”, where third parties publish content on established websites to benefit from their search rankings. Digital publishers had complained that Google’s enforcement was also affecting legitimate news organisations that hosted sponsored or commercial partner content.

The European Commission had opened an investigation under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) after concerns that Google’s ranking actions were lowering the visibility of such publishers.

The DMA allows fines of up to 10% of a company’s global annual turnover for certain violations. Google said the change will apply only within the EEA, while its existing policy will continue elsewhere.