Site Reputation Abuse Now Works Differently Inside the EEA

Two sites can now carry the same manual action and see two different outcomes, decided by where the searcher is sitting. Google published “Update to the Site Reputation Policy” on Friday 28 August 2026, and the change took effect two days later. The spam policies page carries a matching last-updated date of 28 August 2026, and the section is now headed “Site reputation policy” rather than site reputation abuse.

What changed on 30 August

The Search Central post on the site reputation policy update sets out the split in two sentences. For users outside the EEA, a manual action “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.”

Google adds a consequence that is easy to miss: because many pages are viewed by people globally, a page can carry a manual action whose effect is visible only to searchers outside the EEA. One URL, one action, two rendered realities. If your reporting does not separate EEA traffic from the rest, a partial effect of this kind reads as noise.

“Ranks independently” is not “unpunished”

Inside the EEA the affected section “may be separated in our systems so that, over time, it ranks independently from the rest of the site.” The spam policies page for site reputation puts the same mechanism in operational terms: the relevant pages may be categorised as separate from the main domain, which allows the different parts of a site to rank independently of each other, on their own merits, so that casino content ranks against other casino content.

That is the entire point of the policy restated as a different lever. The practice it targets is third-party content published on a host site mainly because of the host’s already-established ranking signals. Severing the section from those signals removes the borrowed advantage without applying a manual action. A publisher who reads the EEA position as a reprieve has misread it.

Why Google made the change

Google states that it is adjusting its enforcement approach “following discussion with the European Commission” and clarifying the criteria it considers when applying the policy. The post also records an objection in the same breath: Google remains concerned “that an overbroad application of the DMA could prevent us from addressing real threats to the integrity of our search results.” That is unusual framing for a policy post, and it is worth reading as written rather than as a retreat. This sits alongside the scaled content abuse policy and expired domain abuse, neither of which has been given a regional carve-out.

Notification, reconsideration, and now mediation

The process around the action is unchanged in its shape. Site owners are notified in the Manual actions report and in the Search Console message centre. Reconsideration requests still apply. One addition is new in the August text: eligible sites will, following a reconsideration request, also have the opportunity to bring disputes to mediation. Google does not define eligibility on the page, so treat that as a route that exists rather than one you can plan around. The detection path is also unchanged: Google applies a presumption that individual pages match the overall quality of other pages on the domain, and where it detects that a portion of a site may be out of line with the policy, that section is subject to human review.

If you run a third-party section

The review itself has not moved. Google says it applies globally and weighs objective factors aimed at understanding how much control the host domain exercises over the page content. The documented question is whether the content is created with sufficient input, editorial oversight or contribution from the host site to be considered fully integrated with it. Nothing about the EEA change alters that test.

The examples Google lists as not inconsistent with the policy are the useful part for anyone auditing their own pages:

• Wire service and press release service sites.
• News publications carrying syndicated news content from other news publications.
• Sites designed to allow user-generated content, such as forums and comment sections.
• Columns, opinion pieces, articles and other work of an editorial nature.
• Advertorial or native advertising whose purpose is to share content directly with readers rather than to manipulate rankings.
• Affiliate links used throughout a page, treated appropriately, or embedded third-party ad units.

Google notes the list is non-exhaustive and that there will be other instances where it takes no action. If your section fits one of those descriptions, the integration test is the thing to document, in writing, before anyone asks. For the underlying definitions, what the site reputation abuse policy targets has not changed with this update.