Google changes spam policy in EU to avert antitrust fine

Alphabet's Google announced changes to its spam policy in Europe on Friday, aiming to address EU concerns that could have led to an antitrust fine. The issue arose after publishers complained about the site reputation abuse policy, which targeted the practice of publishing third-party pages on a site to manipulate search rankings, a technique known as parasite SEO.

The European Union raised concerns that Google's spam policy was demoting the websites and content of news media and other publishers in search results, particularly when those websites featured content from commercial partners.

Google stated that as of August 30, any manual actions taken to demote sites would not apply to users in the 27 European Economic Area (EEA) nations, including Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein. However, the policy would remain unchanged outside the EEA. The company expressed its support for the repeal of this policy, which it deemed unfairly penalized publishers and other business users of Google Search.

The European Commission, acting as the EU competition enforcer, welcomed the policy change, emphasizing that news publications would no longer be unfairly demoted solely for hosting third-party content on Google Search. This move comes as part of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which seeks to curb the power of Big Tech. The Commission will now monitor the implementation of the new policy to ensure it complies with the DMA, with potential fines of up to 10% of a company's global annual turnover for violations.