Google will stop letting site reputation abuse manual actions affect European Economic Area (EEA) searchers, starting August 30, 2026, per a Google Search Central blog post dated August 28, 2026. The change follows discussion with the European Commission and applies to EEA searchers only: outside the EEA, the same manual action still demotes the affected section. Buried in the same post, and expanded roughly tenfold in Google’s documentation, is a second change reaching every searcher: for the first time, Google has published its reviewers’ criteria.
One Manual Action, Two Outcomes
The site reputation policy, introduced in 2024, targets third-party content published on a trusted domain to borrow its ranking strength. What splits by region, and what doesn’t:
| Layer | Searcher in the EEA (from August 30) | Searcher outside the EEA |
|---|---|---|
| Manual action’s effect on ranking | Does not apply | Applies to the affected section |
| Search Console notification | Still sent | Still sent |
| Algorithmic separation of the third-party section | Still runs | Still runs |
“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.”
— Google Search Central blog, August 28, 2026
Only the top row moves: notifications and algorithmic separation apply in both regions.
Does a Lifted EEA Manual Action Mean Rankings Recover on August 30?
Not automatically. Google’s new FAQ says the separation of a flagged section from its host domain “isn’t automatic” and happens “over time,” and a past manual action is not itself used as a ranking signal once it stops applying. A site can hold a manual action Google lifts for EEA searchers and see no ranking movement there on August 30.
The FAQ Closes a Trap
Google also removes a liability for pages under a manual action outside the EEA:
“There’s no obligation to apply a noindex tag to content that is subject to a manual action outside the EEA and failure to do so isn’t taken into account in ranking that content within the EEA. Nor is such failure considered an attempt to evade or circumvent this policy or a repeated violation.”
— Google spam-policies documentation, FAQ
For context on how narrow a manual action’s reach can be, elsop covered a manual action against undisclosed incentivized reviews that removed only star rich results and left rankings untouched. EEA site owners who disagree also get a separate route: Google says it has implemented a new reconsideration request process for EEA sites, committing to answer “within a short timeframe” and to give more detail on its reasoning, with alternative dispute resolution available in the EEA as well.
Ten Times More Documentation, One Clause in the Blog Post
The EEA carve-out is the half everyone is covering; the other half, bigger, sits in the documentation. The “Site reputation abuse” section of Google’s spam-policies page ran 936 characters in an Internet Archive snapshot taken August 26, 2026. Fetched on August 29, 2026, the same section runs 9,009 characters, close to ten times its prior length. The blog post gives that expansion one clause: “clarifying the criteria we consider.” Google’s documentation-updates log for August 28 mentions only the EEA change.
New since August 26: a “More detailed guidance” subsection, four objective factors, worked examples, and a complete FAQ. Google states the scope:
“This review applies globally and takes into account a number of objective factors, aimed at understanding the degree to which the host domain exercises control over the page content.”
— Google spam-policies documentation
The four factors: design and formatting consistency with the host site; a quality gap against the main domain; stated or implied authorship; and identical or near-identical content on other sites. No factor decides a case alone.
Where Google Draws the Line
Two of the worked examples show where the line sits. The first: a publisher runs a coupons section with a specialist partner, on a different CMS from the main site, integrated into the homepage, with disclaimers identifying the publisher as editorially responsible. Google’s verdict: “Unlikely to take action.” In this example a different CMS is not, on its own, a violation signal: Google points to the section’s integration, its disclosure of who is responsible, and a contact point for problems.
The second: a business publication hosts an unauthored affiliate article linking to a marketplace, no disclaimer, no named author, no menu path to it. Google’s verdict: “Likely to take action: unauthored affiliate article not integrated in publication,” the mirror of the first.
Search Engine Roundtable frames this as the first time Google applies a spam policy differently by the searcher’s location rather than the site’s. Its editor, Barry Schwartz: “I am a bit surprised that Google actually is changing how it handles a spam policy based on the region of the searcher but I guess Google decided it has no other choice.” A Google spokesperson, speaking to the trade press, framed the policy as unchanged: “Our European users are no less frustrated by parasite SEO and other deceptive, pay-to-play tactics that degrade search results, and we stand by our Site Reputation Policy.” Google’s other spam-enforcement move this month named no target: elsop covered the August spam update Google rolled out without naming a target.
Source: Google Search Central, “Update to the Site Reputation Policy”; Google spam-policies documentation; Search Engine Roundtable, “Google Won’t Enforce Its Site Reputation Policy In The European Economic Area”.
