Google announced on August 28, 2026 that it will stop enforcing manual actions under its site reputation abuse policy for users searching within the European Economic Area (EEA). The change takes effect on August 30, 2026 and follows discussions with the European Commission over the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
What was announced
The Google Search Quality team published a post on the Google Search Central Blog explaining that the company is "adjusting our enforcement approach within the European Economic Area (EEA) and clarifying the criteria we consider when applying the policy." Google said it remains concerned that "an overbroad application of the DMA could prevent us from addressing real threats to the integrity of our search results," but believes the new approach still enables it to combat search manipulation.
What changed
Beginning August 30, the effect of a site reputation manual action depends on where the searcher is located:
- Outside the EEA: A manual action under the site reputation policy will directly demote the affected portion of the site in search results, as it does today. The rest of the site remains unaffected.
- Inside the EEA: The manual action will not apply to search results. Instead, Google said the affected section of the site "may be separated in our systems so that, over time, it ranks independently from the rest of the site."
Site owners will continue to receive manual action notifications in Google Search Console regardless of where their visitors are located. They can still submit reconsideration requests, and eligible sites will have the option to bring disputes to mediation after the reconsideration process.
Google noted that because many pages are viewed by people globally, a page might carry a manual action that only affects search results shown to users outside the EEA.
Context
Google introduced the site reputation abuse policy in 2024 alongside the March 2024 core update. The policy targets a practice commonly called "parasite SEO," where third-party content is published on a trusted domain primarily to exploit that domain's ranking signals. Google began enforcing the policy with manual actions in January 2025.
This is the first time Google has applied different spam-policy enforcement based on the geographic location of the searcher. A Google spokesperson said the company stands by its site reputation policy and that "our European users are no less frustrated by parasite SEO and other deceptive, pay-to-play tactics that degrade search results."
The adjustment comes under the DMA framework, which requires designated gatekeepers to comply with specific obligations in the EEA. Google's blog post does not detail which DMA provision prompted the change or describe the specific discussions with the European Commission.
What has not been confirmed
The announcement does not explain how Google will technically separate affected site sections for EEA ranking, or what timeline applies to that separation. Google did not specify which sites currently hold site reputation manual actions or how many are affected. The blog post also does not say whether algorithmic actions under the same policy continue to apply identically in the EEA, though Google's language about sections ranking "independently" suggests some form of algorithmic treatment remains in place.
It is also unclear whether other spam policies will receive similar regional adjustments in the future.
