Google changes spam policy in EU to avert antitrust fine

Alphabet's Google announced changes to its spam policy in the European Union on Friday, aimed at addressing concerns that could have led to an antitrust fine. The tech giant faced criticism from publishers over its site reputation abuse policy, which targeted the practice of publishing third-party pages on a site to manipulate search rankings, a tactic known as parasite SEO.

EU regulators argued that Google's spam policy was unfairly demoting news media and other publishers' websites and content in search results, particularly when those sites included content from commercial partners.

Google stated that starting August 30, any manual actions taken to demote sites in compliance with its spam policy would no longer apply to users in the 27 EU nations, Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein, collectively known as the European Economic Area (EEA). The company emphasized that the policy would remain unchanged outside the EEA.

The EU Commission welcomed the repeal of this policy, describing it as unfair to publishers and other business users of Google Search. The European Commission's spokesman, Thomas Concerns, acknowledged that the policy had raised red flags and prompted an investigation under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a regulatory framework designed to curb the dominance of Big Tech companies.

The DMA prohibits search engines from demoting press publications solely for hosting third-party content. The EU Commission will now oversee the implementation of the new policy to ensure compliance with the DMA, which could result in fines of up to 10% of a company's global annual turnover for violations.