Google's site reputation penalty is not applied in Europe, its effect splits in two on August 30
In a Search Central post dated August 28, 2026 Google announced a separate enforcement approach for the site reputation policy in the European Economic Area. From August 30 a manual action keeps affecting searches outside the EEA directly, while inside the EEA its impact does not apply.
Google changed how the policy is applied in Europe
The Google Search Quality team announced an update to the site reputation policy on the Search Central blog on Friday, August 28, 2026.
The policy was introduced in 2024. Its purpose is to stop third party content being published on a trusted website purely to exploit that site's good reputation and rank higher. Google says the practice hurts search quality and creates a bad experience for users.
Per the post, following discussion with the European Commission, Google is adjusting its enforcement approach within the European Economic Area and clarifying the criteria it considers when applying the policy.
Google also puts its own reservation on the record in the same post, saying it remains concerned that an overbroad application of the digital markets rules could prevent it from addressing real threats to the integrity of its search results.
From August 30 the same action produces two different outcomes
Per the post, beginning August 30 manual actions applied under the site reputation policy produce a different result for people searching inside the European Economic Area than for those searching outside it.
For users outside the EEA nothing changes: the manual action directly affects search results for the portion of the site concerned, and the rest of the site is not affected.
For users inside the EEA the impact of the manual action does not apply. Instead the affected section of the site may be separated in Google's systems so that, over time, it ranks independently from the rest of the site.
Notification and appeal routes remain. Site owners continue to be notified in Search Console when a manual action is applied, and anyone who believes an action was taken in error can submit a reconsideration request. Google adds that eligible sites will, following the reconsideration request, also have the opportunity to bring disputes to mediation.
The post also notes that many pages are viewed globally: a page may carry a manual action while that change only affects the results shown to users outside the EEA.
Per Search Engine Journal, Google also clarified the criteria it examines: whether the content is visually consistent with the host domain, content quality relative to the main site's standards, clear authorship and editorial responsibility, and whether identical content appears across multiple sites.
The penalty does not disappear, the borrowed authority is cut off
The assessment in this section is ours. The real function of a manual action is not erasing a page, it is cutting off the transfer of borrowed authority. The remedy described for the EEA makes that even clearer: the section is not punished, it is separated from the main site and ranks on its own strength.
In practice this is a mechanism that breaks the economics of rented subdirectories. If a coupon or sponsored content section no longer carries the authority of the newspaper or corporate site hosting it, most of what that rent buys disappears with it.
The second point is measurement. The same address behaving differently by geography makes rank tracking without a country breakdown misleading. A tool looking from Europe and one looking from Türkiye can show a different picture for the same page.
The third point is the tension between regulation and search quality. Google put that tension into the post in its own words. It shows how search results are moving from a purely technical matter into a space of legal negotiation.
What it means for businesses in Türkiye
The assessment below does not appear in the source, it is our reading. The post contains no Türkiye specific information.
Türkiye is not part of the European Economic Area. So for searches made from Türkiye the effect of a manual action continues in full as before. For a publisher in Türkiye this news is not relief.
For publishers renting a subdirectory to third parties the risk sits exactly where it was. Coupon pages, campaign pages and sponsored review sections are the classic examples of this policy.
The clarified criteria give a practical checklist. Does the subdirectory visually belong to the site, is the content at the main site's quality bar, are authorship and editorial responsibility clear, and does the same content appear on other sites. If those four questions are uncomfortable to answer, the risk is already yours.
For sites taking traffic from both Türkiye and Europe the picture splits in two. The same section can be invisible in one market while ranking on its own strength in the other, which makes country level reporting mandatory rather than optional.
The UNALSOFT take
On the web design and content architecture side we do not treat domain authority as a rentable asset. The strength of a domain is the sum of the work published on it; renting it out to someone else's content produces revenue in the short term and lost rankings in the long term. When a site we build genuinely needs third party content, we write three things down at the start: who produced the content, who holds editorial responsibility, and whether that section is held to the same quality bar as the main site. This update shows why those three questions are institutional rather than technical. And one more thing: a penalty that varies by geography requires measurement to be read by geography too.
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Let us review your content architecture and subdirectory policy together.