Google has made an unusual change to the way one of its search spam policies works in Europe – and, perhaps surprisingly, the rules now have a different effect depending on where the person searching is located.
The change relates to Google’s site reputation policy, sometimes associated with a tactic known in the SEO industry as parasite SEO.
It sounds technical, but the principle behind it is actually quite simple.
What is site reputation abuse?
Imagine a well-established website that has spent years building authority and trust with Google.
A completely separate company then publishes content on that website – perhaps product reviews, discount codes, financial offers or other commercially focused pages – primarily because those pages have a much better chance of ranking when they sit on an established domain.
In effect, the third party is attempting to borrow the website’s authority.
Google introduced its site reputation abuse policy in 2024 specifically to combat this practice. Google describes it as third-party content being placed on an established website primarily to take advantage of the ranking signals the host website has already earned.
It is important to make a distinction here.
Simply having freelancers, guest contributors, affiliate links, sponsored content or commercial partnerships on your website does not automatically break Google’s rules.
The issue is the purpose of the content and the relationship it has with the rest of the website.
So what has Google changed?
On 28 August 2026, Google announced that enforcement of the policy would work differently within the European Economic Area (EEA) from 30 August onwards.
Strictly speaking, therefore, this isn’t simply an “EU versus UK” change. The EEA includes EU member states together with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
The UK is outside the EEA.
For people searching from the UK and other countries outside the EEA, Google can continue to apply a manual action that directly affects the offending section of a website.
For someone making the same Google search from within the EEA, that manual action will no longer have the same direct effect.
Instead, Google says it may effectively separate the third-party section from the main website’s authority and allow it to rank on its own merits.
That creates the unusual situation where the same webpage could perform differently depending on the country where the Google search is performed.
Why has this happened?
This wasn’t simply an SEO algorithm update.
The European Commission opened an investigation in November 2025 into whether Google’s treatment of publishers under the site reputation policy complied with the EU’s Digital Markets Act.
Regulators were concerned that legitimate publishers could be unfairly disadvantaged for working with commercial partners and other third-party content providers.
Following discussions with the European Commission, Google changed its enforcement approach within the EEA.
Interestingly, Google hasn’t abandoned the policy. It continues to argue that site reputation abuse can damage search quality.
Instead, it has changed how the consequences are applied.
What about businesses in the UK?
For UK businesses, Google’s site reputation policy hasn’t disappeared.
The UK remains outside the EEA, which means Google can still apply manual actions affecting content that it considers to be exploiting another site’s reputation.
The UK is developing its own approach to regulating Google, however.
In June 2026, the Competition and Markets Authority introduced new requirements around Google’s search services, including requirements intended to make organic rankings more objective, transparent and non-discriminatory. These requirements also cover Google’s AI-powered search features.
So although the UK and EU are taking different regulatory routes, both are placing increasing scrutiny on the way Google decides which businesses, publishers and websites receive visibility.
Does this affect a normal business website?
For the majority of small and medium-sized businesses, there is no reason to panic.
A plumber publishing an article written by a freelance copywriter isn’t suddenly breaking Google’s rules. Neither is a business accepting a genuinely useful guest contribution or using appropriate affiliate links.
Google’s own updated guidance gives examples showing that third-party content can be perfectly acceptable when the host website maintains editorial involvement, the content fits naturally within the website and responsibility for it is clear.
The bigger lesson is about relevance and authority.
Publishing large amounts of unrelated content simply because certain keywords attract traffic is becoming an increasingly poor SEO strategy.
A website about engineering doesn’t necessarily strengthen itself by adding dozens of pages about loans, casinos or discount vouchers simply because those searches are commercially attractive.
Google increasingly wants authority to be earned within a subject.
Authority can’t simply be borrowed
This is arguably the most interesting part of the update for businesses planning their SEO strategy.
For years, SEO has placed considerable emphasis on the overall authority of a domain.
That still matters.
But Google is becoming increasingly capable of understanding individual sections of websites, who produced the content, what the business genuinely specialises in and whether particular pages deserve the authority associated with the main domain.
Google’s updated guidance even explains that some third-party sections may effectively be treated independently so they have to compete against similar content on their own merits.
That is an important direction of travel.
What this tells us about SEO in 2026
Modern SEO is becoming less about exploiting ranking signals and more about establishing genuine subject expertise.
That means businesses should concentrate on building strong core service pages, useful supporting content, clear expertise, authoritative references and a website structure that makes it obvious what the business is actually knowledgeable about.
It is also increasingly relevant to AI search optimisation.
Google AI Overviews and other AI search systems need to decide which sources are credible enough to reference. Building genuine topical authority, therefore, supports more than traditional Google rankings – it helps establish why a business should be treated as a trusted source in the first place.
This is something we explored recently in our article SEO After AI and What Still Works in 2026.
The takeaway
Google’s site reputation update probably won’t directly affect most UK business websites.
But it is another useful indication of where search is heading.
Google wants to understand who is responsible for content, why it exists and whether its authority has genuinely been earned.
For businesses, that’s actually quite a healthy direction.
Rather than chasing shortcuts, the strongest long-term strategy is becoming increasingly straightforward: build a website around what your business genuinely knows, answer the questions your customers actually ask, demonstrate real expertise and gradually become a recognised authority within your market.
That’s the approach that increasingly works for traditional SEO – and for the emerging world of AI search as well.
