Manual penalties for Site reputation abuse will not impact search results for users in the European Economic Area after August 30. Google cites a European Commission decision as the reason for this regional change. The rest of the world will see no change.
Google will stop enforcing Site reputation abuse penalties in the European Economic Area (EEA) after August 30, following a decision by the European Commission. From that date, the impact of manual actions for Site reputation abuse will depend on where the user is located.
Google will continue to notify website owners about manual actions in Search Console, and site owners can still submit reconsideration requests.
For users in the EEA-which covers all 27 EU countries and three EFTA states-these penalties will not change search results. Google may still flag the affected parts of a site internally, so they can be ranked separately from the rest of the website over time, but there will be no immediate drop in visibility in search.
According to industry reports, Google is also implementing a mechanism to ensure that previous manual sanctions for site reputation abuse do not negatively affect search results for users in the EEA. This means that content demoted outside the EEA may remain visible within the region, leading to different search experiences based on user location.
