On August 28, 2026, Google published an update to its site reputation policy following discussions with the European Commission. From August 30, a manual action under the policy has different effects depending on where the search happens.
For publishers with an international audience, the practical result is that the same flagged section can perform differently in two sets of markets.
What Is Site Reputation Abuse?
Google introduced this policy in 2024 to prevent third-party content from being hosted on trusted domains solely to borrow that domain’s ranking power. Examples of sites and sections that trigger this policy include:
- News sites publishing discount-code directories in subdirectories that are unrelated to the news site’s core topic
- Established domains hosting credit, insurance, or gambling comparison sections managed by outside parties without meaningful editorial oversight
- Sections filled with sponsored content published in bulk without editorial review
The policy does not target a site’s own editorial content or clearly labeled, editorially vetted partnerships.
The Two Enforcement Models
| Searcher location | Effect of a manual action |
|---|---|
| Outside the EEA | The affected section is suppressed in search results. The rest of the site is unaffected. |
| Inside the EEA | Ranking suppression doesn’t apply. The affected section may be separated in Google’s systems so that, over time, it ranks independently from the rest of the site. |
Site owners in both cases still get a Search Console notification and can file a reconsideration request.
Separation Is Not a Pass
It’s tempting to read the EEA model as “no penalty.” It is closer to removing the benefit the abuse was designed to capture.
Site reputation abuse works because a third-party section borrows the host domain’s trust. A coupon directory on a major news domain outranks standalone coupon sites mainly because of the domain it lives on. When Google separates that section, it stops inheriting those signals and has to compete on its own content and links. Suppression outside the EEA is immediate. Separation inside the EEA erodes the same advantage more gradually.
The Clarified Criteria
Google also clarified what it looks at when assessing the policy. The factors can be summarized as:
- Whether the section is presented consistently with the rest of the site in design, formatting, and user experience
- Whether its quality diverges noticeably from the main site
- Whether authorship and third-party involvement are clearly disclosed
- Whether the same content is duplicated across multiple sites
These are useful self-audit questions for any publisher running partner content, whether or not it has ever received a manual action.
Monitoring a Site With Audiences in Both Regions
Publishers with traffic from both sides of the border can no longer read performance changes for a flagged section as a single trend.
- Segment the Search Console performance report by country, grouping EEA and non-EEA markets separately.
- Compare the flagged section’s clicks in the UK, US, or Türkiye against Germany, France, or the Netherlands after August 30.
- Watch for a slow decline inside the EEA even where rankings didn’t drop right away, since that is what separation looks like over time.
The broader history of how Google’s spam and quality systems have evolved is covered in Google Algorithm Updates History.
Quick Take
This is one of the clearest cases of European regulatory pressure producing a different version of Google Search for EEA users. The policy’s definition hasn’t changed. Its enforcement now depends on the searcher’s location. Publishers relying on the EEA model as a safe harbor may find that losing the host domain’s authority has much the same result, only more slowly.