Google's site-reputation manual actions have a different effect in the EEA

Google announced different treatment of site-reputation manual actions for searchers inside the EEA from 30 August 2026. The distinction concerns the searcher’s location, not simply where the affected publisher is based.

What happened (added 19 September 2026): The change was due to take effect on 30 August 2026. As of 19 September 2026 we had found no later revision of Google’s announcement.

The policy concerns how third-party content uses a host site

Google’s site-reputation abuse policy covers third-party content published mainly to benefit from the host site’s established ranking signals. The presence of a guest article, affiliate link or partner section alone does not establish a violation.

A manual action is applied after human review and appears in Search Console. It is separate from the automated ranking systems that may also affect a site’s pages.

The announced regional difference

Google says the impact of a site-reputation manual action does not apply to searchers in the EEA, while it can affect the relevant part of a site in results outside the EEA. The EEA includes the EU countries, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

Notifications remain. An owner can still receive a Search Console manual-action notice even when the site’s main audience is in the EEA. A domestic ranking chart may therefore fail to show an effect occurring in another market.

This does not mean every European reader will see unchanged results. Google also says an affected section may be separated in its systems and, over time, rank independently from the rest of the site. Other ranking changes remain possible.

Review the content and the audience

The policy guidance describes factors including presentation, content quality, editorial responsibility and duplication across sites. Google says no single factor decides the case. Read the examples and exceptions alongside those factors before classifying a client’s partner content.

For an agency, the immediate work is to inventory relevant sections, establish who controls their content and check the manual-actions report. Keep reporting segmented by the markets the client serves.

Do not treat the EEA distinction as a general exemption from the policy or a reason to ignore a notice. Record the affected URLs, the notice and the actions taken. For the separate automated rollout, see our August spam-update article.