Google Stops Demoting EU Publishers Under Its Spam Policy from Sunday
From Sunday, a European news publisher that runs sponsored content on its site will no longer be at risk of a manual demotion in Google Search within the 27 EU member states, plus Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein. Google confirmed the change on Friday, as reported by Reuters, which is designed to settle a European Commission investigation.
The company stated that manual actions demoting sites will no longer apply to users in the specified regions from August 30. However, the policy remains unchanged globally, meaning the same page can rank differently depending on the user’s location.
This change addresses Google’s site reputation abuse policy, introduced in March 2024, targeting what the search industry calls parasite SEO, the practice of parking third-party content on established domains to inherit their search authority.
Publishers argued that the enforcement caught the wrong people, as sponsored sections, affiliate reviews, and commercial partnerships are common revenue streams for news organizations.
The Commission opened an investigation on November 12, 2025, under the Digital Markets Act, examining whether the policy unfairly demoted publishers for legitimate monetization practices.
Google, however, maintains that its priority is to keep Search results helpful and useful for users, protecting them from deceptive practices like ‘parasite SEO’ spam.
The change is in the enforcement mechanism rather than the principle. Manual actions, applied by human reviewers to specific sites, were the primary concern for publishers.
The potential fines under the DMA, reaching up to 10% of a company’s global annual turnover, led to Google’s decision to propose a carve-out.
Google previously signaled its intention and submitted a remedies package to the Commission in May, offering to modify the policy’s application to news domains and enhance transparency.
While Friday’s announcement clarifies the offer’s details, it is narrower than some publishers hoped, focusing on manual demotions rather than algorithmic systems that handle most ranking work.
Whether the Commission finds this satisfactory remains uncertain, and the Commission has not made a formal statement.
For search professionals, this creates a split rulebook, requiring jurisdiction-specific advice on parasite SEO. For publishers, the new policy presents a more nuanced compliance landscape.