Google commits to adjust 'parasite SEO' policy to avoid EU regulators fine

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has announced that it will end manual search penalties under its “parasite SEO” rules throughout Europe on August 30. 

The announcement is supposed to put an end to a European Commission inquiry that threatened Google with a fine of almost 10% of Google’s global revenue.

Manual demotions come to a halt throughout the EEA on August 30

The change may only apply to the EEA, but it is definite. Google will no longer allow manual search demotions for sites that flout its site reputation abuse policy in the 30 countries that are in the European Economic Area. 

The rule kicks in from August 30, 2026. This will not apply to countries outside the EEA.

The policy in question is focused on parasite SEO or “site reputation abuse.” Under that setup, a third party has to put up some money to get its material published on a well-known website in order to take advantage of the host’s high search rankings. 

Google considers this to be spam, as readers, as well as its ranking systems, will think they are looking at content belonging to the host rather than a tenant.

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