Alphabet's Google said on Friday that it has changed how it enforces its spam rules in Europe, following concerns from EU regulators that the policy could unfairly hurt news publishers and other websites that carry content from commercial partners.
The Google logo outside the company's offices in London on June 24, 2025. Carlos Jasso/ReutersThe dispute centers on Google's policy against "site reputation abuse," a practice often called "parasite SEO." It occurs when a third party publishes content on a well-established website primarily to benefit from that site's strong reputation in Google Search and gain higher rankings than the content might receive on its own.
Google introduced the policy to target arrangements in which outside companies use trusted websites mainly as vehicles for boosting their search visibility.
European regulators, however, raised concerns that Google's enforcement was too broad. They found that the policy was also reducing the search rankings of legitimate publishers simply because their websites contained material produced with, or supplied by, commercial partners.
Google said that from August 30, manual actions taken under the policy will no longer apply to users in the European Economic Area - the 27 EU states plus Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein. The policy remains unchanged everywhere else. The policy does not apply to ZeroHedge, as
