Abstract:
Google, owned by Alphabet, announced on the search quality team blog on Friday that starting from August 30, manual measures issued in response to the "site reputation abuse" policy will no longer have a downgrade effect on the search results of users in the European Economic Area (27 EU countries and Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein); while the search results of users outside the area will still be processed according to the original rules.
This means that a policy has not been abolished globally, and the same page may display different rankings in Berlin and Boston. The European Commission has launched an investigation into this under the Digital Markets Act and stated that it will continue to monitor whether the new implementation method complies with regulations.
The core of policy adjustment: What changes is the implementation effect, not the rules themselves
"Site reputation abuse" refers to placing third-party content under a domain name with a high reputation and gaining undue advantage by using the ranking signal of the host site. It is commonly known in the industry as "parasitic search optimization". Google will include it in the spam policy during the core update in March 2024, and begin to implement manual processing of the columns or subdomains involved instead of blocking the entire site.
Friday’s announcement clarified two parallel rules:
For users outside the European Economic Area
: Manual measures will still be applied directly to the offending page, and the rest of the site will not be affected.For users within the European Economic Area
: The "downgrade effect" of the same manual measure is no longer reflected in the search results; the marked column may be split at the system level, and after a period of time, it will be independently ranked according to its own quality, and will no longer inherit the authoritative signal of the host domain name.
The webmaster will still receive a notification of manual measures in the Search Console and can submit a reconsideration application; after passing the reconsideration, he can also enter the mediation process. Although the EEA display results are not affected, background records remain because the same page may be accessed by users around the world.
Additional explanation on the official policy page: Related pages in the European Economic Area can be classified into subcategories independent of the main domain and compete based on similar content (for example, the gambling column competes with the gambling column, rather than ranking based on the weight of the news brand). There is no unified deadline for the split timetable, and the announcement only stated that it "progresses over time." The algorithmic approach of treating a column as an independent site for evaluation has not been abolished.
A Google spokesperson said that European users also face problems with parasitic content and paid space occupying, and the company still adheres to this policy; however, it is worried that the overly broad application of the "Digital Market Law" will weaken anti-spam capabilities. In response to the European Commission's concerns, Google agreed to adjust the European implementation method and clarify the judgment criteria. The signature of this blog comes from the search quality team, not an unnamed individual; it takes only two days from when the blog is published on Friday to take effect on Sunday.
European Commission Investigation and Publishers’ Appeal
The European Commission officially filed the case in accordance with the "Digital Market Law" on November 13, 2025. Regulatory monitoring found that when news and other publishing sites host content from commercial partners, the original policy will overall or partially depress the search rankings of these sites, and publishers say traffic and advertising revenue are harmed. German company ActMeraki and the European Publishers Organization both participated in the complaint. A spokesman for the European Commission welcomed Google's adjustment, saying that search will no longer downgrade news publications solely for hosting third-party content, and promised to continue to monitor whether implementation is in compliance with the Digital Markets Act. Violations of this law can result in fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover.
Google characterized this adjustment as a change in enforcement standards "after discussions with the European Commission" and reiterated its concerns that the law is being overused. Over the same period, the list of policy examples has been condensed, with the caveat that it is not exhaustive and that action may not be taken in some cases. Out-of-area enforcement rules have not been modified.
Pending items and follow-up monitoring
Manual action notifications will not be stopped because the searcher is located in the European Economic Area. Webmasters may still see the "Site Reputation Abuse" entry in the Search Console, and the reconsideration channel remains unchanged. After reconsideration, the existing mediation mechanism can be entered. However, the official has not announced the number of manual measures that have taken effect, the number of items that will be "de-influenced" on the EEA display layer, nor a technical completion time limit for column splitting.
For publishing websites that target both European and American readers, the results are divided by region: users in the European Economic Area are no longer directly suppressed by this manual measure, while users outside the area still see the columns that have been reduced according to the original penalty. The definition of "parasitic search" and the standards written into the policy in 2024 have not been abolished. The European Commission retains monitoring rights, but has not set a timetable for the next time it will initiate penalty procedures.
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