Google Ends EU Spam Demotions but Keeps the Ranking Split

Google stopped applying site reputation manual demotions to EEA searchers on 30 August after Digital Markets Act talks. The same page can now rank in Berlin and drop in Boston. Google still describes the underlying practice as deceptive.

Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier called the move a repeal. Google’s spam rules still say the third-party section may be split from the host domain and ranked on its own.

A Manual Penalty That Stops at the EEA Border

The Google Search Quality team posted the change on Friday, 28 August, adjusting enforcement inside the EEA after discussion with the European Commission. Manual actions under the site reputation policy now do different work depending on where the searcher sits.

Outside the EEA, a human-applied action still hits the affected portion of a site in the results. The rest of that site stays untouched, as before. Inside the EEA, the impact of that same action will not apply.

The carve-out covers the 27 EU countries plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. Everywhere else the older line remains. Site owners still get a Search Console notice when a reviewer applies the action, and a page seen worldwide can carry a penalty that only changes results shown outside Europe.

Google has not withdrawn the policy. The post says the company remains concerned that an overbroad reading of the DMA could block it from handling real threats to search quality, and it still presents the 2024 rule as a way to stop third-party pages from exploiting a trusted host.

What Changes for Searchers in Europe

A searcher in Lisbon and a searcher in Chicago can now be shown different treatments of the same URL. The named demotion is the piece that stops at the EEA border. The quieter ranking split does not.

HOW THE SAME MANUAL ACTION NOW WORKS

That table is the whole operational change. Advice written for a New York domain no longer travels cleanly to a Dublin newsroom, because the penalty and the ranking split no longer move together.

Thomas Regnier Calls the Demotions Over

The Commission opened this file on 13 November 2025, asking whether Google Search offered publishers fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory access. Officials pointed to the site reputation abuse policy, and to news sites that lost visibility when they carried content from commercial partners.

Teresa Ribera, the competition commissioner, said at the opening that news publishers should not lose important revenue at a difficult time for the industry. The case sits under DMA Articles 6(12) and 6(5). Google Search had been named a core platform service on 6 September 2023 and had to meet those duties by 7 March 2024.

We welcome the repeal of this policy, which unfairly penalised publishers and other business users of Google Search.

Thomas Regnier, Commission spokesman

Regnier also said that, thanks to the DMA, Google Search will no longer demote press publications solely for hosting third-party content, and that the Commission will now monitor the new line. The opening of proceedings in November did not prejudge a finding, and Friday’s welcome does not close the file.

Google’s view of the conduct has not moved. A spokesperson said European users are no less frustrated by parasite SEO and other pay-to-play tactics that degrade results, and that the company stands by the site reputation policy even as it changes how that policy is applied in Europe.

Independent Ranking for the Guest Section

The sentence publishers should price sits in the spam rules, not in the political readout. For results shown inside the EEA, the relevant pages may be classed as separate from the main domain, so the parts of a site can rank independently on their own merits. Google’s example is blunt: casino content ranks against other casino content.

That is not a free ride on a newspaper’s name. A guest block that used to inherit the host’s ranking signals can be scored as if it were its own site. The labelled demotion is off for European searchers. The inherited boost that made the commercial partnership valuable is still in play.

Press sites that rent subdirectory space, and the third-party shops that fill those URLs, now face a more open lane in European results than they do in the United States, at least as far as the named penalty goes. They do not automatically get the host’s authority back. Three days after the switch, there is still no public ranking study that shows how far those guest sections actually moved.

Site reputation abuse, in Google’s wording, is the practice of publishing third-party pages on a site mainly to take advantage of ranking signals the host earned with its own content. The March 2024 announcement said sponsored pages written for a publication’s regular readers were not the target. The November 2024 tightening said first-party involvement, including white-label and licensing setups, does not change the third-party nature of the material.

From March 2024 to a Split Rulebook

The EEA carve-out is a late patch on a policy that had already been live for more than two years. Large news brands used affiliate review desks and sponsored sections as ordinary revenue lines, then watched those desks become the test case for the rule.

HOW THE POLICY GOT TO A SPLIT MAP

1. March 5, 2024: Google announces the site reputation abuse policy with two other spam rules and sets a start date of May 5, 2024.
2. May 5, 2024: Manual enforcement begins. Human reviewers can demote the offending slice of a domain.
3. November 19, 2024: Google updates the wording after reviewing white-label deals, licences and partial-ownership setups, and says first-party involvement does not cure the issue.
4. November 13, 2025: The Commission opens DMA proceedings focused on how the policy treats publishers that host commercial-partner content.
5. May 2026: Google files a remedies package in Brussels on how the policy applies to news domains.
6. August 28, 2026: The Search Quality team publishes the EEA split and points site owners to reconsideration and mediation.
7. August 30, 2026: Manual-action impact stops applying to EEA search results.

Forbes told some product-review freelancers in December 2024 that it was pulling back, and an editor there cited this policy. Visibility studies from late 2024 put sharp drops on affiliate sections attached to big news brands, including Time’s review desk, while the news homepages themselves were not the target.

Search Console Still Sends the Same Notice

Publishers hoping the Friday post meant a quiet life will still see the paperwork. The action can still be logged. The difference is what that log does to a person searching from Europe.

WHAT STILL HITS A PUBLISHER IN EUROPE

• The notice: Search Console still flags a site reputation manual action even when EEA results ignore its impact.
• The request: Owners can still file a reconsideration request and must explain the fix, including if they noindex the guest pages.
• The split: The affected section may still be separated so it ranks on its own over time.
• The extra step: Eligible sites can, after reconsideration, bring disputes to mediation.

Moving the guest copy to a subdirectory or subdomain on the same domain is still treated as a possible dodge, and can widen the action. Moving it to a fresh domain with no built-up reputation is the path Google has long described as cleaner, and even then the owner still has to ask for the action to be lifted.

For an SEO team the practical load is a jurisdiction tag on every compliance note. A takedown that satisfies a reviewer for US results may change nothing a user in Oslo sees, and a European newsroom that keeps the partner desk can still watch that desk lose the host’s signals.

The 10 Percent Fine That Did Not Land

A first DMA breach can cost up to 10% of worldwide turnover, and a repeat can cost 20%. That ceiling is why a regional switch at two days’ notice looked cheap next to a formal finding. The Commission said in November 2025 that it aimed to finish this probe within 12 months of opening it.

THE DMA MONEY GOOGLE ALREADY KNOWS

• July 23, 2026: The Commission fined Google €890 million in a separate DMA case, €460 million for Search self-preferencing and €430 million for Play steering.
• June 27, 2017: The shopping decision ran to €2.42 billion for giving Google’s own comparison service an illegal edge.
• September 2025: An ad-tech decision added a €2.95 billion fine on a different file.

Pandu Nayak, chief scientist of Search, wrote when the publisher case opened that the probe was misguided and risked harming millions of European users. He also wrote that a German court had already dismissed a similar claim. Nine months later the company switched the named penalty off for those users anyway, while leaving the ranking split in the rulebook.

The Commission said it will now watch how the new line is applied. The 12-month clock on the original probe, opened on 13 November 2025, still has time left to run.