Google Scraps Search Ranking Penalties for Publishers After EU Pressure

Google has altered its policy for penalizing websites in the European Economic Area (EEA), following discussions with the European Commission, according to a blog post published on August 28. The company introduced the policy in 2024 to prevent third-party content from being published on reputable sites in order to manipulate search rankings, thereby compromising search quality and user experience.

The European Commission initiated an investigation into Google's policy in November 2025, as it potentially violated the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) by demoting content from news media and publishers in search results. Teresa Ribera, executive vice-president for clean, just and competitive transition at the European Commission, expressed concern that the policy unfairly treated publishers in search results.

The Commission's investigation aimed to ensure that publishers were handled fairly and non-discriminatory in Google's search outcomes.

In reaction to the Commission's concerns, Google revised its enforcement of the policy, as detailed in the August 28 blog post. Manual actions, which are determinations that pages on a website are non-compliant with Google’s spam policies, will no longer impact the search results for those pages within the EEA. Affected sections of the website may be isolated in the company's systems, ranking independently from the rest of the site over time.

However, outside the EEA, manual actions will still directly influence the search results for the affected portion of the site.

Google's blog post stated that while the company remained concerned about a broad application of the Digital Markets Act potentially hindering its efforts to address search result integrity, the new approach enabled them to combat manipulative search result practices. A spokesperson for the European Commission, Thomas Regnier, welcomed the policy's repeal, stating that it unfairly penalized publishers and other business users of Google Search. The Commission vowed to monitor Google's implementation of the new policy.