Google splits site reputation enforcement by region and names four tests

Google will stop letting site reputation manual actions affect search results shown inside the European Economic Area from August 30, splitting enforcement of its parasite SEO policy along geographic lines. The same update publishes, for the first time, the factors Google weighs when deciding whether third-party content on a host domain counts as abuse.

The notice went up on the Search Central blog on Friday, August 28. Google says the adjustment follows discussion with the European Commission, and it is not happy about it: the post warns that "an overbroad application of the DMA could prevent us from addressing real threats to the integrity of our search results." The policy itself, introduced in 2024 to stop third-party content being published on trusted domains to borrow their ranking strength, is unchanged. What changes is what a penalty does, and where.

One page, two sets of search results

Outside the EEA, nothing changes: a manual action hits the affected portion of a site and leaves the rest alone. Inside the EEA, its impact does not apply. Instead Google may separate the offending section so that, over time, it ranks independently of the parent domain — casino content ranking against other casino content, in Google's own example, rather than inheriting the host's authority.

The paperwork is unaffected. Google states that "site owners will continue to be notified within Search Console when a manual action is applied," with reconsideration requests still available and, for eligible sites, mediation after that. So a site can be notified of a penalty that changes nothing about its European traffic while quietly removing its American traffic.

Search Engine Land's Barry Schwartz read the sectioning behaviour as not especially new, and reserved his surprise for the precedent: "I am a bit surprised that Google actually is changing how it handles a spam policy based on the region of the searcher." A Google spokesperson told the same outlet that European users are "no less frustrated by parasite SEO and other deceptive, pay-to-play tactics that degrade search results."

A placement can now be live in Frankfurt and gone in Chicago, on the same URL, on the same day.

The four factors are the part worth reading twice

Buried under the regional news is the more useful change. As Search Engine Journal's Roger Montti documented, Google replaced its thin list of abuse examples with detailed guidance on how reviews work. Human review is described as rare, applies globally regardless of the EEA split, and turns on four objective questions about how much control the host domain really exercises:

• Presentation. Do the design, formatting, typography and UX match the host domain?
• Quality. Are there quality problems on the page that do not appear elsewhere on the main domain?
• Authorship. Is there explicit acknowledgement of who owns or is responsible for the content?
• Duplication. Does the same or near-identical content appear across multiple other sites?

Google is careful to say this is not a scorecard you can pass on points, noting that "these examples are non-exhaustive. There will be other instances where we don't take action." It also states a default assumption worth internalising: new pages are presumed to match the overall quality of the domain they appear on. That presumption is what a paid placement is buying, and what the policy exists to interrupt.

The worked examples draw the line more clearly than any previous guidance. A publisher's coupons section survives when the publisher curates it, discloses the commercial relationship, keeps editorial responsibility and links it from real navigation. Freelance affiliate content survives when it carries a named author, gets editorial oversight and is written for that publication rather than syndicated. What Google flags as likely to be actioned is an unauthored affiliate article with no commercial disclosure, unreachable from navigation, duplicating copy from a third-party marketplace.

What software marketers should do differently

If you buy placements — a slot in a "best project management software 2026" roundup on a large media domain, a sponsored comparison page, a vendor-supplied review — the duplication factor should worry you most. The cheapest way to run that programme has always been to write one blurb and push it to twenty publishers. Google has now named that pattern explicitly. The cheap version of the tactic is the version that gets caught.

The less obvious exposure runs the other way. Your own domain hosts third-party content too: partner guest posts, a co-marketing hub, a vendor-populated integrations directory. The four factors apply to your marketing site exactly as they apply to a newspaper's.

Reporting needs adjusting before August 30 rather than after. A blended referral number will average a live European result against a suppressed one everywhere else and show you a gentle decline instead of a policy event. And for placements on domains you do not own, the Search Console notice — the only reliable early warning — goes to the publisher, not to you. Ask for it in the contract.

• Require original copy per publication, never syndicated boilerplate.
• Insist on a named author and visible commercial disclosure.
• Check the placement is reachable from the publisher's real navigation.
• Have publishers forward any manual action notice touching your content.
• Run the same four checks on third-party content you host yourself.