According to reports from Reuters and Business Standard, Alphabet's Google has revised its spam policy in Europe following concerns from EU regulators that could have resulted in an antitrust fine. The policy change took effect Friday in the European Economic Area, which includes 27 EU countries, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. Google stated that manual actions taken to demote websites under the policy would not apply to users in these regions, while the policy remains unchanged outside the EEA. The technology company found itself in EU regulators' crosshairs after publishers complained about its site reputation abuse policy, which targets the practice of placing third-party content on a website to manipulate search rankings, commonly known as parasite SEO. As per Reuters, the revised approach took effect from 30 August, offering publishers some breathing room while broader regulatory scrutiny continues.
As reported by Reuters and Business Standard, the European Union's monitoring found that Google's spam policy could demote news media and other publishers' websites and content in Google Search when those websites included content from commercial partners. The EU's concerns centered around Google's site reputation abuse policy, which targets the practice of publishing third-party pages on a website to exploit the host site's ranking signals and influence search rankings - commonly known as parasite SEO. The European Commission had opened an investigation under the DMA over these concerns, with the Commission stating that its monitoring found that the policy had resulted in news organisations and other publishers seeing their websites and content downgraded in Google search results when they hosted material from commercial partners. The Commission's investigation puts Google under pressure to demonstrate that its search practices do not unfairly disadvantage publishers that work with commercial partners.
According to the report, breaches of the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) can attract fines of up to 10% of a company's global annual turnover. The potential financial exposure prompted Google to address the regulatory concerns through policy changes. The revised policy specifically addresses the EU's concerns about unfairly penalizing publishers and other business users of Google Search, coming as the EU continues to scrutinise the practices of major technology platforms under the DMA legislation designed to regulate the market power of major technology companies.
As reported by Reuters and Business Standard, the European Commission welcomed the policy change through spokesman Thomas Regnier. Regnier stated that the repeal addressed concerns that publishers and other business users of Google Search had been unfairly penalised. He emphasized that 'Thanks to the DMA, Google Search will no longer demote press publications solely for hosting third-party content'. The Commission will now monitor the application of Google's revised policy to ensure compliance with the DMA, as the EU continues to scrutinise the practices of major technology platforms under the DMA legislation. Google's European policy change therefore offers publishers some breathing room while the broader regulatory scrutiny continues, with the search giant drawing a clearer line around where its spam penalties apply, with Europe getting its own set of rules.
