Google Splits EU Search Rankings to Avert a Fine

From Sunday, Google Search will no longer apply manual site reputation demotions to users in the European Economic Area, a carve-out Google confirmed on Friday. Reuters reported the shift is meant to settle a Digital Markets Act probe that could have ended in a fine. The same commercial page can now rank in Paris and drop in Chicago, because the rule still runs everywhere else.

The policy itself is unchanged. What moves on 30 August is the ranking hit that a human reviewer can attach to a named domain, and only for searchers inside the EEA, which covers the 27 EU countries plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

Search Console Will Still Show the Penalty

Site reputation abuse is Google’s name for what the search trade calls parasite SEO: parking third-party pages on a trusted host so those pages inherit the host’s ranking strength. Manual enforcement of that rule began in May 2024, after Google named it in the March 2024 spam policies. A later rewrite on 19 November 2024 closed a popular defence, saying first-party oversight does not save the pages if they are there to ride the host’s signals.

SITE REPUTATION ABUSE

• The tactic: Third-party pages go up on a host mainly to borrow ranking signals the host earned from its own work.
• What is allowed: Third-party content on its own is not a violation; Google says the problem is using the host as a ranking shortcut.
• How it is caught: A human reviewer can issue a manual action, and automated systems can also flag the pattern.

Google’s Friday note is narrower than a repeal. Sites in the EEA will still get the Search Console notice when a reviewer applies the action. Reconsideration remains open, and eligible sites can take a dispute to mediation after that request. The ranking effect of that action will not apply inside the EEA. Outside it, the action still hits the affected section, while the rest of the site is left alone, as before.

Barry Schwartz, who published the Search Engine Roundtable write-up of the change, called it the first time Google has applied different spam outcomes based on where the searcher sits. That is the operating fact publishers and agencies now have to price.

Why Brussels Opened Case DMA.100231

The European Commission opened proceedings against Alphabet on 12 November 2025 and announced them the next day as case DMA.100231. The file sits on two DMA duties that already bind Google Search as a designated core platform service: a ban on self-preferencing, and fair and non-discriminatory access rules for business users. Alphabet had to meet those duties by 7 March 2024, after the 6 September 2023 designation.

Commission monitoring found signs that the site reputation rule was demoting media publishers in search results when their sites carried content from commercial partners. Brussels treated that as a normal way for publishers to make money, not as a spam trick. Teresa Ribera, the Commission’s executive vice-president for competition, said the concern was that Google’s policies “do not allow news publishers to be treated in a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory manner in its search results.”

Reuters reported complaints from German publisher ActMeraki and from the European Publishers Council, the European Newspaper Publishers Association and the European Magazine Media Association. Pandu Nayak, chief scientist of Google Search, called the probe misguided at the time and said it risked harming millions of European users. Google has not dropped that view of the underlying behaviour.

THE ROAD TO SUNDAY

1. March 5, 2024: Google names site reputation abuse in its spam policies.
2. May 2024: Manual actions begin against third-party sections on established domains.
3. November 19, 2024: Google says first-party involvement or oversight is not a defence.
4. January 2025: Search Engine Roundtable reports that enforcement reaches Europe.
5. November 12, 2025: The Commission opens DMA.100231; the public statement follows a day later, with a 12-month target to finish.
6. May 6, 2026: Reuters, citing a Commission document, reports that Google has offered to change the spam policy to head off a fine.
7. August 28, 2026: Google confirms the EEA carve-out, effective 30 August.

The initiation of proceedings, the Commission said at the time, does not prejudge a finding of non-compliance. Friday’s change is the first time the shape of Google’s May offer has been visible from the outside, and Brussels has not said whether it is enough.

Casino Pages Must Rank as Casino Pages

The sentence that will govern European commercial desks is not the one about switching off the manual hit. It is the one that follows. For users inside the EEA, Google wrote, the affected section of the site may be separated in its systems so that, over time, it ranks independently from the rest of the site. The updated spam-policy page puts the same idea in plainer terms: the relevant pages may be categorised as separate from the main domain, so that casino content ranks against other casino content.

That is not a promise that a newspaper’s shopping folder keeps the newspaper’s authority. It is a promise that a human penalty will not be the thing that buries it for EEA users. The folder can still be measured on its own, without the host’s stored trust. SEO consultant Glenn Gabe, writing on Friday, said that independent ranking “could result in the same demotion.” That reading is the one that matches Google’s own example. A coupon or casino block that only ever ranked because it sat on a news domain is still being asked to compete as if it were a standalone site.

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.

Google spokesperson, comments to Search Engine Roundtable, 28 August 2026

The company added that it remains committed to the policy because it “ensures a better, more reliable search experience for everyone.” Manual actions taken outside the EEA, the spam-policy FAQ now says, do not change rankings shown to users inside it. The reverse is also true. A page can carry the action on its record and still appear normally to a searcher in Dublin.

Forbes Advisor and the Queries That Vanished

The publishers who forced this fight already paid for the old rule in public. After the November 2024 clarification, SEO trackers logged sharp drops on shopping and advice folders that lived on news domains, while the news homepages themselves often held up. Sistrix figures cited by Ars Technica put the lost traffic across third-party reviews on Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fortune and Time at $7.5 million in a single week that November.

Lily Ray, an SEO consultant who published folder-level charts at the time, wrote that visibility on Forbes.com’s /advisor/, /health/ and /home-improvement/ subfolders fell to zero in the days after the manual actions went out. Those are US-heavy properties. They still face the full manual hit for searchers outside the EEA. A reader in Berlin and a reader in Boston can now be shown two different fates for the same URL.

That is the bounded relief for European newsrooms. Sponsored sections, affiliate reviews and commercial partnerships, which the Commission called a common way to monetise a site, are safe from one kind of named penalty in one region. They are not guaranteed a place in the results. Google can still peel the section off and score it as if the masthead were not there.

Rank Tracking Splits at the EEA Border

Search advice that used to travel now has to name a jurisdiction. A compliance choice made in Dublin will not necessarily hold in New York, and a fix built for New York will over-correct a site whose traffic is mostly EEA. The United Kingdom sits outside the EEA, so a London shopping desk is still under the old manual rule even when a Dublin desk is not.

WHAT CHANGES IN PRACTICE

• The notice: Search Console will still flag the site reputation action, including for EEA properties.
• The EEA SERP: That action’s ranking impact is switched off for users in the 30-country EEA group.
• The rest of the world: The same action still demotes the affected section for everyone else.
• The peel: Google may still treat the commercial folder as its own site and rank it without the host’s authority.
• The appeal path: Reconsideration stays, and eligible sites can take the dispute to mediation after that request.
• The UK gap: British publishers are outside the carve-out, so their affiliate folders remain exposed to the manual hit.

Rank-tracking software already has to ask a query hundreds of times to see a stable result. From Sunday it also has to ask from more than one country, or it will report a recovery that only exists for EEA IPs. Affiliate networks that lease a subdirectory on a news domain now have a product they can sell into Europe with less fear of an overnight named penalty, and a product they still cannot safely park on the same URL for US searchers.

Playbooks for parasite SEO did not vanish while Brussels studied the file. The tactic is still being taught as a way to rank commercial posts on other people’s platforms. Google’s own Friday statement keeps calling those tactics deceptive. The company is not withdrawing the diagnosis. It is withdrawing one enforcement tool, for one map, after a regulator made the tool expensive.

The Commission Aimed to Finish Within 12 Months

THE DMA MATH

• Fine ceiling: A DMA breach can cost up to 10 percent of worldwide turnover, and 20 percent if the breach is a repeat.
• 2025 sales: Alphabet reported $402.8 billion in annual revenue, so a 10 percent hit is a number large enough to buy a regional carve-out.
• Recent DMA bill: On 23 July 2026 the Commission fined Google €890 million in two other DMA cases, one on self-preferencing in Search and one on Play Store steering.
• Clock: The site reputation probe was opened with a 12-month aim, which runs toward mid-November 2026.

Google had already signalled it would move. The May filing, as Reuters described it from a Commission document, offered changes to how the policy applied to news domains and more visibility into the effect on publisher pages. Friday is the first public view of that bargain, and it is still only a bargain on the human lever. Algorithmic ranking, which does most of the day-to-day work, is the system Google says can separate a section and score it on its own merits.

Regulators can accept commitments, demand more, or press on to a formal finding. Nothing in Google’s statement closes those routes. A gatekeeper that can switch off a penalty for one region at two days’ notice has also shown that the penalty was always a choice. Until the Commission says whether a regional exemption is a remedy, a page that Google still flags as site reputation abuse can rank for a reader in Dublin and disappear for a reader in Dallas.