Google changes spam policy in EU to avert antitrust fine

EU says Google's spam policy demoted news and publisher sites with content from commercial partners

Alphabet's Google on Friday said it had changed its spam policy,  in Europe to ​address EU concerns that could have resulted in an ‌antitrust fine.

The US tech giant found itself in EU regulators' crosshairs after publishers complained about its site reputation abuse policy.

It targets the practice of publishing ​third-party pages on a site in an attempt to abuse ​search rankings by taking advantage of the host site's ⁠ranking signals, commonly referred to as parasite SEO.

The EU said ​that its monitoring showed that Google's spam policy demoted news media ​and other publishers' websites and content in Google search results, when those websites include content from commercial partners.

Google said that from August 30 any manual actions ​taken to demote sites would not apply to users in ​the 27 EU nations, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein (the European Economic Area).

The policy would ‌not ⁠change outside the European Economic Area, it added.

"We welcome the repeal of this policy, which unfairly penalised publishers and other business users of Google Search," EU Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said.

Read More: Major tech companies call for defensive surge to defeat AI-driven hacks

Concerns about the ​policy had prompted ​the European Commission, ⁠which acts as the EU competition enforcer, to open an investigation under the Digital Markets Act, ​which aims to rein in the power of Big ​Tech.

"Thanks ⁠to the DMA, Google Search will no longer demote press publications solely for hosting third-party content," Regnier said.

"The Commission will now monitor the ⁠application ​of the new policy to ensure it ​is compliant with the DMA."

DMA breaches can cost companies fines of up to 10% ​of their global annual turnover.