Google's Spam Policy Hit by EU Antitrust Complaint From German Media Company

EU Antitrust Complaint Filed Against Google's Spam Policy

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A German media company has complained to EU antitrust regulators following Alphabet unit Google's crackdown against companies gaming its search algorithm to push up rankings for other sites.

In its complaint to the European Commission, Hamburg-based Meraki Group GmbH urged immediate action against the policy, saying it penalises websites.

Launched in March last year, Google's site reputation abuse policy targets the practice of publishing third-party pages on a site in an attempt to abuse search rankings by taking advantage of the host site's ranking signals, commonly referred to as parasite SEO.

Meraki's complaint echoed a joint grievance by the European Publishers Council, the European Newspaper Publishers Association and the European Magazine Media Association which issued a letter on Tuesday calling for regulatory action.

"Google continues to unilaterally set the rules of doing business online in its own favour, preferencing its own commercial offerings and depriving competing service providers of any visibility. It is time to put an effective end to this," Meraki's lawyer Thomas Hoppner said.

Google said its spam policy was in response to user feedback.

"We've heard very clearly from users that site reputation abuse - commonly referred to as 'parasite SEO' - leads to a bad search experience for users, and this policy update helps to crack down on this behaviour," a Google spokesperson said.

"We enforce our spam policies through a careful review process, which includes a well-defined reconsideration process for affected site owners."

The Commission, which acts as the competition enforcer in the 27-country European Union, did not respond to repeated emailed requests for comment.

The publishers said Google's allegedly non-transparent manual penalty adjustments and inconsistent policy enforcement against websites for cooperating with third-party content providers have hurt their traffic and revenues.

They said media outlets in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and other European countries have reported sharp drops in search rankings since Google enforced its policy in January.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Giles Elgood)