Business

Google changes spam policy in EU to avert antitrust fine

Read a summary of this article on FAST.

Get bite-sized news via a new
cards interface. Give it a try.

Click here to return to FAST
Tap here to return to FAST

Aug 28 : Alphabet’s Google on Friday said it had changed its spam ​policy in Europe to address EU concerns that could have resulted in an antitrust fine.

The U.S. tech giant found itself in EU regulators’ crosshairs after ​publishers complained about its site reputation abuse policy.

It targets ​the practice of publishing third-party pages on a site in ⁠an attempt to abuse search rankings by taking advantage of ​the host site’s ranking signals, commonly referred to as parasite SEO.

The EU said that ​its monitoring showed ⁠that Google’s spam policy demoted news media and other publishers’ websites and content in Google search results, ​when those websites include content from commercial partners.

Show More

Show Less

Google said that from August 30 any manual actions taken to demote sites would not apply to users in the 27 EU nations, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein (the European Economic Area).

The policy would not change outside the European Economic Area, it added.

Concerns about the policy had prompted ​the European Commission, which acts as the EU competition enforcer, to open an investigation under the Digital Markets Act, which aims to rein in the power ​of Big Tech.

DMA breaches can cost companies fines of up to ⁠10 per cent ​of their global annual turnover.

Source: Reuters

Sign up for our newsletters

Get our pick of top stories and thought-provoking articles in your inbox

Get the CNA app

Stay updated with notifications for breaking news and our best stories

Get WhatsApp alerts

Join our channel for the top reads for the day on your preferred chat app

Get bite-sized news via a new
cards interface. Give it a try.

Click here to return to FAST
Tap here to return to FAST

About The Author

admin

See author's posts