Google changes spam policy in EU to avert antitrust fine

Alphabet Inc.'s Google announced modifications to its search spam policy in Europe to address regulatory scrutiny from the European Union that threatened potential antitrust fines. The policy adjustments target European Commission concerns regarding site reputation abuse, also known as parasite SEO, where third-party commercial content hosted on publishers' websites had been demoted in search rankings. EU monitoring had established that the previous spam enforcement disproportionately hurt news media and publisher visibility across search results. Under the revised policy, Google confirmed that starting August 30, manual actions aimed at demoting such websites will no longer be applied to search users within the European Economic Area (EEA), encompassing the 27 EU member states, Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein. However, Google noted that the existing spam enforcement policy will remain unchanged outside the EEA. The policy concession allows Google to mitigate legal and financial risks associated with the European Commission's investigation under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Non-compliance under DMA rules can carry severe penalties, including fines reaching up to 10% of a company's total annual global turnover.