Starting Sunday, Google will no longer downgrade EU publishers under its spam policy.

      Starting Sunday, a European news publisher that publishes sponsored content on its website will no longer risk facing a manual demotion in Google Search. Google confirmed this update on Friday, and according to Reuters, it aims to resolve an investigation by the European Commission that could have resulted in a fine.

      The company stated that manual actions leading to site demotion will cease to impact users in the 27 EU countries, as well as in Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein, beginning August 30. The existing policy will remain unchanged in other parts of the world, meaning the same page may rank differently based on the location of the person searching.

      The concern centers around Google’s site reputation abuse policy, which was introduced in March 2024 and expanded in November. This policy targets what the search sector terms parasite SEO, which involves placing third-party content on a well-established domain, allowing the content to benefit from the host's authority in search rankings.

      For almost two years, publishers have maintained that the enforcement of this policy has impacted the wrong individuals. Sponsored sections, affiliate reviews, and commercial partnerships are typical revenue sources for news organizations, and a manual demotion could potentially eliminate one of these sources from search results almost immediately.

      The Commission recognized this issue as worthy of investigation. On November 12, 2025, it opened a case under the Digital Markets Act to examine whether the policy unfairly penalized publishers for legitimate monetization strategies.

      At the time, Google described the investigation as misguided and has remained firm in its stance regarding the underlying behavior. A spokesperson told Reuters, “Our priority is to keep Search results helpful and useful for users and protect them from deceptive practices like ‘parasite SEO’ spam that undermine the web.”

      What has changed is the way enforcement is applied, rather than the principle itself. Manual actions are penalties applied by human reviewers to specific sites and have been the source of the loudest complaints from publishers because they represent a direct penalty on a particular domain.

      The urgency behind this decision is evident, as a breach of the DMA could lead to fines of up to 10% of a company's global annual revenue—a significant number for Alphabet that makes a policy adjustment seem cost-effective.

      Google had already indicated it would take action, submitting a remedies package to the Commission in May that proposed alterations to how the policy pertains to news domains and aimed to enhance visibility regarding its effects on publisher pages, though the complete details were never disclosed.

      Friday’s announcement marks the first visible outline of that offer externally, but it is more limited than what some publishers anticipated, as it only addresses manual demotions rather than the algorithmic systems that manage most day-to-day rankings.

      It remains uncertain whether this will satisfy Brussels, as the Commission has not made any statements. Regulators can either accept these commitments, request further actions, or continue to pursue a formal determination, and nothing in Google’s statement rules out any of these possibilities.

      For search professionals, this means a genuinely bifurcated regulatory landscape. Guidance on parasite SEO must now specify a jurisdiction, and a compliance decision made in Dublin may not apply in New York.

      For publishers, the relief is tangible yet limited. The revenue stream that the policy jeopardized is now protected from one specific type of penalty in a particular region, but this does not guarantee where a page will rank in the coming month.

      There is also an unspoken precedent that neither party appears eager to highlight. A gatekeeper capable of disabling an enforcement mechanism for a specific region with just two days’ notice indicates that the mechanism had always been discretionary.

      Alphabet has encountered similar situations before, most notably with the €2.4 billion fine for shopping practices in 2017. Its recent tendency has been to concede the enforcement mechanism while defending its rationale. Sunday’s change closely follows that established pattern.

      The next step lies with the Commission, which will determine whether a regional exemption serves as a remedy or is merely symbolic. Until a decision is made, Europe will simply experience a slightly modified version of Google.