Google announced on Friday, Aug. 28, that it will change its spam and site reputation rules in Europe as pressure from the European Union grows over concerns about competition and online publishers.
The move comes as the U.S. tech giant faces scrutiny from European regulators over whether its enforcement system is unfairly hurting legitimate news organizations and web publishers.
Google's site reputation abuse policy has become a major point of concern. The policy is designed to prevent websites from using their strong search rankings to promote low-quality or unrelated content. However, European regulators and publishers have raised concerns about how the rules are being applied.
The European Commission has argued that Google's automated enforcement and broad use of its spam rules may have pushed down legitimate content in search results. Some publishers say the system has also affected news content by reducing online visibility, traffic and advertising revenue.
The issue is sometimes linked to "parasite SEO," a practice in which third-party content uses the ranking strength of an established website to gain higher positions in search results.
In response to the growing pressure, Google said it will make changes to its spam and reputation policies, which include the 27 EU member states as well as Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.
Starting from Aug. 30, manual actions used by Google to demote websites will not apply to users in those countries, the company said. Its spam and site reputation rules will continue to operate under the existing approach outside the region.
The Digital Markets Act is one of the key laws being used by the EU to promote fair competition in the digital markets. The financial stakes are significant. Companies that fail to comply with the Digital Markets Act can face fines of up to 10% of their total worldwide annual revenue.
Google's latest move also shows how changes to search algorithms and spam policies can have a direct impact on publishers that depend on Google for online traffic.
