Google is continuing to send website owners notifications about manual actions under its site reputation abuse policy, even though those actions do not apply to search results in the European Economic Area (EEA), Search Engine Land reports.
According to the publication, two months ago Google announced it would no longer apply manual actions for site reputation abuse to search results in the EEA. In practice, however, the system has continued to generate and send the corresponding notifications through Search Console, creating confusion for webmasters: they receive a message about a violation that formally does not relate to their EEA traffic.
Site reputation abuse is the practice of placing third-party material on an authoritative domain purely to exploit its reputation and search ranking, without the site owner's real involvement in creating or controlling the content. Google began tackling such schemes through its manual actions system and later adjusted its approach for the European region.
For site owners, the situation means that when a notification arrives it is important to check exactly which regions and sections the action relates to, and not to jump to conclusions about a full removal from the index. The publication advises carefully reviewing the details of the notification in Search Console and taking regional differences in the application of the policy into account.
Google has not yet given a detailed comment on why the notifications continue to be sent when no action is actually being applied in the EEA, or whether a correction to this behavior is planned.
