Google changes spam policy in EU to avert antitrust fine

Google has changed its spam policy in Europe to address concerns from EU regulators. The policy change targets "parasite SEO", a practice where third-party pages are published on a site to abuse search rankings by exploiting the host site's ranking signals.

The EU had expressed concerns that Google's spam policy was demoting news media and other publishers' websites and content in search results when those sites included content from commercial partners. In response, Google will no longer apply manual actions to demote sites for users in the 27 EU nations, Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein, effective August 30.

The European Commission had opened an investigation into Google's policy under the Digital Markets Act, which could have resulted in fines of up to 10% of Google's global annual turnover if the company was found to be in breach. According to Investing.com, the policy change will not apply outside the European Economic Area.

Brief written by urgent.news from Economic Times Tech, Investing.com — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.