I’ve been following the news closely, and it seems the EU is setting its sights on Google. The buzz is about a new investigation concerning Google’s approach to penalizing publishers that use sponsored content. For many media outlets, this type of content is crucial for revenue.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is preparing for what could be a significant EU scrutiny. The allegations suggest Google demotes news publishers in search results if they run promotional or sponsored content, a key revenue stream for these publishers.
What’s Happening: The European Commission, the EU’s leading authority on antitrust regulation, is gearing up to announce this probe. We might hear something as soon as Thursday.
The case is filed under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). This legislation aims to prevent tech giants, known as “gatekeepers,” from unfairly prioritizing their own services or disadvantaging others.
Companies breaching these rules could be fined up to 10% of their global revenue, which is a hefty amount.
Site Reputation Abuse: Google’s actions against these publishers spring from a spam policy first introduced in March 2024, and then refreshed in November 2024.
This policy targets “site reputation abuse” or what we in the SEO world might know as parasite SEO. Essentially, it’s when third parties use trusted sites to post low-quality content to game Google rankings.
Google argues that such content can mislead users and has actively taken measures against sites hosting these dubious materials.
The policy was later amended to clarify that even content overseen by the original site can still breach the rules if it mainly aims to exploit a site’s ranking signals.
The Report: If you’re interested in digging deeper, you might want to check out the detailed coverage at EU readies fresh investigation into Google over news publisher rankings (registration required).
Inspired by this post on Search Engine Land.
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