Friday, August 28, 2026
In 2024, we introduced our site reputation policy to stop a practice where third-party content is published on a trusted website just to exploit that site's good reputation to rank higher in Search. This practice hurts search quality, and creates a bad experience for users.
Following discussion with the European Commission, we are adjusting our enforcement approach within the European Economic Area (EEA) and clarifying the criteria we consider when applying the policy. While we remain concerned that an overbroad application of the DMA could prevent us from addressing real threats to the integrity of our search results, we believe this approach enables us to combat attempts to manipulate search results for our users.
Beginning August 30, manual actions applied under our site reputation policy will have a different effect for those searching in the EEA than outside of it. In particular:
- For users outside the EEA, a manual action regarding our site reputation policy will directly affect search results for the portion of the site affected. As before, the rest of the site won't be affected.
- For users inside the EEA, the impact of the manual action won't apply. The affected section of the site may be separated in our systems so that, over time, it ranks independently from the rest of the site.
Site owners will continue to be notified within Search Console when a manual action is applied. If you believe an action was taken in error, you can submit a reconsideration request. Eligible sites will, following the reconsideration request, also have the opportunity to bring disputes to mediation. Because many pages are viewed by people globally, it's possible that any given page might have a manual action taken on it, but that change will only affect search results shown to users outside the EEA.
We are committed to our site reputation policy because it ensures a better, more reliable search experience for everyone.