From today, 30 August, a page that Google has penalised for spam can be demoted in your search results if you are in Delhi or Dallas — and rank normally if you are in Dublin. Google has stopped applying manual penalties under its site reputation abuse policy to search results shown to users inside the European Economic Area, and it says it is doing so because the European Commission told it to. Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz calls it the first time Google has applied different spam-policy outcomes based on where the searcher is.
What Google has actually changed
Site reputation abuse — the industry calls it parasite SEO — is what happens when a reputable domain rents out a corner of itself to someone else’s content, so that a casino affiliate page or a coupon farm inherits a newspaper’s search authority. Google’s policy has treated that as spam and hit offending pages with a manual action, which pushes them down the rankings.
Google’s own spam policy documentation now sets out two different outcomes. Outside the EEA, it says, “If a site is found to be out of line with this policy, the relevant pages may be subject to a manual action when they appear in Search results shown to users outside the EEA.” Inside it, the same pages “may be categorized as separate from the main domain but won’t be subject to the impact of manual action.”
This is not just forward-looking. Google’s documentation states that it will lift all previous manual actions taken under the policy for pages appearing in results for EEA users, and that those pages will no longer be demoted or penalised in results shown there. Asked in its own FAQ whether a manual action taken outside the EEA will affect a site’s ranking within the EEA, Google answers: no.
Why Google says it did this
Google is not presenting this as an improvement. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz:
Our European users are no less frustrated by parasite SEO and other deceptive, pay-to-play tactics that degrade search results, and we stand by our Site Reputation Policy. While we remain concerned about efforts to weaken our spam policies, we’ve agreed to make changes to our enforcement approach for users in Europe and clarify our policies to address the European Commission’s concerns.
The Commission’s side of the argument is not frivolous. Reuters reporting relayed by Android Headlines says the DMA enquiry followed findings that Google’s enforcement had demoted legitimate news publishers whose sites carried sponsored content from commercial partners — in other words, that a rule aimed at casino affiliates was catching real newsrooms whose commercial arrangements are disclosed and above board. Those same reports put the potential penalty at up to 10 percent of Google’s global turnover, a figure that comes from the reporting rather than from a Commission statement.
Who actually pays for this
Whichever side you think is right about the DMA, the cost of the compromise does not land on Google or on the Commission. It lands on searchers in the 27 EU member states plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, whose results now come with one fewer layer of spam filtering than everyone else’s. A European searching for a product review, a coupon or a “best casino” list is more likely than a reader elsewhere to be handed a page that a Google reviewer already looked at and judged deceptive.
There is also a question Google’s statement does not address: a policy that a company only enforces in some jurisdictions is a weaker policy everywhere, because the incentive to build parasite-SEO operations does not stop at a border. Google says it stands by the policy. As of 30 August, it stands by it in most of the world and not in Europe. This is the same pattern visible across the DMA compliance fights — see Apple’s repeated rewrites of its EU App Store fees — where a rule written for one market produces a second-class version of the product rather than a better one.
For site owners, the mechanics are unchanged: Google says notifications still arrive in Search Console when a manual action is applied, and reconsideration requests are still available.
Sources: Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Land
