Google changes spam policy in Europe amid EU concerns

US technology giant Alphabet, the parent company of Google, announced on Friday that it will change its spam policy in Europe to address concerns raised by the European Union that could have resulted in a fine, Reuters reported, CE Report quotes AGERPRES.

Google came under scrutiny from European regulators after publishers complained about its policy concerning the publication of third-party pages on websites in an attempt to manipulate search rankings by taking advantage of the host site’s ranking signals, a practice known as parasite SEO.

According to Brussels, its monitoring showed that Google’s spam policy demotes news websites and content from other publishers in Google search results when those sites include content from commercial partners.

Google said that starting August 30, any site-ranking demotions under the policy will no longer apply to users in the 27 EU member states, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, which together make up the European Economic Area (EEA).

However, the US technology giant said the policy will remain unchanged outside the EEA.

Concerns over these practices prompted the European Commission, which acts as the EU’s competition regulator, to open an investigation under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a major European law aimed at tackling abuses of dominant market positions by technology giants.

Violations of the DMA can result in fines of up to 10% of a company’s global turnover.

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