Google eased its site reputation penalty in Europe, not in Australia

Google has softened one of its spam penalties for people searching in the European Economic Area (EEA). Australia is not in it. If your site hosts guest posts, sponsored reviews, a partner's deals page or anyone else's content, and Google issues a manual action over it, that section still drops in search results shown in Australia, as it did before 30 August 2026.

One thing did change for everyone. On 28 August Google also rewrote its policy page to spell out the test its reviewers use, and that review applies globally. If your site carries other people's content, that test is the part worth your time.

What changed on 30 August 2026

Google posted an Update to the Site Reputation Policy on its Search Central Blog on 28 August. From 30 August, a manual action under that policy has a different effect depending on where the person searching is.

Google's post puts it in two lines. For users outside the EEA, a manual action will directly affect search results for the portion of the site affected. For users inside the EEA, which is the European Union plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, the impact of the manual action won't apply.

Search Engine Roundtable called it the first time Google is applying different rules and outcomes for its spam policies based on the location of the searcher. Search Engine Journal reported on 28 August that Google is replacing site reputation abuse penalties in the EEA with a system that can rank affected site sections independently.

What "site reputation abuse" looks like on a small business site

One hosted section that does not match the rest of the site.

In plain terms, it is someone else's content sitting on your site mainly to borrow your site's standing in Google. People in the industry call it parasite SEO.

On a small Australian site it rarely looks sinister. It looks like this:

a sponsored "review" a supplier wrote, paid you to post, and sends word for word to other sites
a coupon or deals section a partner runs under your domain, with no disclosure, editing or input from you
a third-party page on a topic your customers never come to you for, placed there to rank
an article with no named author or editor, copied from what a third party supplied

The question is less who wrote it and more why it is there. If the main reason a page exists is to ride your site's reputation in search, rather than to help the people who come to you, it is in the territory this policy targets. Google's own example on the safe side is a coupons and deals section made with a third party but integrated into the publication, which tells readers who is responsible for it and how to reach them: unlikely to take action, the policy says.

Google's spam policies state the stakes plainly: "Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all." The site reputation policy is one of them.

Why searches in Australia still get the full penalty

Source: Google Search Central Blog, "Update to the Site Reputation Policy", 28 August 2026

What decides it is where the searcher is. Your customers in Perth, Townsville or Hobart search from outside the EEA. For them, a manual action on a hosted section pushes that section down in results. Nothing about that has changed.

There is one piece of steadiness in Google's wording: as before, the rest of the site won't be affected. The manual action is aimed at the portion that broke the policy, so your service pages are not demoted by it. Google's manual actions help page adds one warning: if a site is repeatedly inconsistent with the policy, "that may lead to further manual actions and/or affect your site's overall ranking."

But the section you agreed to host is ranked lower or omitted from search results shown in Australia. If a partner is paying for that section to be found, it stops doing its job.

"As before, the rest of the site won't be affected."

Source: Google Search Central Blog, 28 August 2026

What stays the same everywhere, EEA included

Everywhere	EEA only
The human review and its four factors A notice in the Manual actions report and the Search Console message center A reconsideration request	No manual action effect on results shown there The section may be categorised as separate from the main domain A commitment to answer reconsideration requests within a short timeframe Alternative dispute resolution

Source: Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search, site reputation policy, updated 28 August 2026

The European change is narrower than it sounds. Only the manual action's ranking effect differs by region. The review behind it applies globally, in Google's words, and weighs the same factors everywhere. Inside the EEA, where the manual action has no effect, Google says the affected pages may be categorized as separate from the main domain so they rank on their own merits. Search Engine Roundtable reads that as the automated side of the policy, under the heading Algorithmic Action Still In Place.

The paperwork does not change either. Google says it will notify you in the Manual actions report and in the Search Console message center, and every site can appeal with a reconsideration request. For websites in the EEA, Google has added a reconsideration process in which it commits "to answer requests within a short timeframe and provide more details on the reasoning", plus access to alternative dispute resolution. That extra is for EEA sites, not Australian ones.

How Google's policy got to this point

The policy is not new. Google announced it in its March 2024 core update and new spam policies post on 5 March 2024 and said it would "take effect starting May 5, 2024". By Search Engine Roundtable's account, Google began enforcing its site reputation abuse policy in Europe in January 2025. Google's post said the EEA change would begin on 30 August 2026; Search Engine Roundtable later added that it was now in effect as of September 8th, when Google rolled out wider changes to search results in the EU to comply with the Digital Markets Act.

For searches in Australia, what a manual action does has not changed. Google's word for it is "as before". What is new is how much of the test Google has written down.

Manual action or spam update: where to look first

If a section of your site drops, do not guess. Open Search Console and go to the Manual Actions report. A manual action under this policy comes with a notice there, wherever your site is based.

No notice means it is not a manual action. Something else moved your numbers. One candidate this spring: Google released the September 2026 spam update on 24 September (US Pacific time), which applies globally and to all languages, and said the rollout may take up to two weeks to complete. The dashboard also lists an August 2026 spam update from 18 August. Spam updates are changes to Google's automated systems, not a human review, so they do not come with a manual action notice. Line up your drop's dates against the Search status dashboard before you change anything.

For a wider way to read your numbers, see how to tell whether your SEO is actually working.

What to check if your site hosts anyone else's content

Does it look like the rest of your site: the same design, formatting, typography and page features?
Is its quality up to the standard of your own pages?
Does it say who wrote it and who is responsible for it?
Does the same content appear, word for word or nearly, on other sites?

Source: Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search, site reputation policy, updated 28 August 2026

Start with a list of everything on your site that someone else writes, supplies or controls. Then put Google's own four questions to each one, from the policy's more detailed guidance:

Does it look like the rest of your site: the same design, formatting, typography and page features?
Is its quality up to the standard of your own pages?
Does it say who wrote it and who is responsible for it?
Does the same content appear, word for word or nearly, on other sites?

Google says no one of these is "either necessary or sufficient on its own". It weighs them together, so use them to see a section the way a reviewer would, not as a pass mark.

For a section that falls short, Google's manual actions help page lists the ways out: move it to a new domain (nofollow on any links to it, no redirects), noindex it, redo it as your own first-party content, or remove it. It also warns that moving it to a subdomain or subdirectory of your own site may be seen as an attempt to get around the policy, which could lead to broader action against your site. If a manual action has already landed, make the change first, then select Request Review in the Manual Actions report.

This fits neatly into a 20-minute website health check you can do yourself. Add one line to it: open the Manual Actions report and note what it says.

Want a second pair of eyes on your hosted content?

If your site runs guest posts, sponsored reviews, a partner's deals page or pages a supplier wrote, and you are not sure which side of this policy it sits on, tell Search Engine Hub what you host and why. Send the details through our contact page and ask for a straight answer on your site.