The stories about Policy & Penalties from this period, ranked by likely impact on a single site.
Ranked by estimated impact on a single site, not by publication time.
Searchers outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), the manual action will apply but not within the EEA.
Policy & Penalties
Google is replacing site reputation abuse manual actions in the EEA with a system that can rank affected site sections independently.
Ranking & Algorithms Policy & Penalties
When users didn’t know whether an image was AI-generated, the images we tested did not create any perception penalty compared to stock photos.
Content & Quality Policy & Penalties
New EU guidelines, why AI sparkles aren’t enough, when AI labels are required, and what the rules mean for AI-powered features and products.
Policy & Penalties
Today, we are expanding our spam policies to address a deceptive practice known as "back button hijacking", which will become an explicit violation of the "malicious practices" of spam policies,…
Policy & Penalties
Google will be updating its alcohol advertising policy on September 30, 2026. The update "revises country-specific guidelines, expands allowed advertising locations, and provides clearer details on…
Paid Search Policy & Penalties
Anchor text — the clickable words in a link — used to be one of the most heavily gamed ranking signals in SEO. Sites built entire link networks around exact-match anchor text, and search engines…
Ranking & Algorithms Links Policy & Penalties
In August, DuckDuckGo filed an amicus brief agreeing that Google unlawfully maintained a monopoly in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Policy & Penalties
A Google spam update targets manipulative content, links, and behaviors that violate Search Essentials. Learn how spam updates work, how to tell if you were hit, and how to recover.
Ranking & Algorithms Policy & Penalties
Assembled from our own archive of 551 stories, which currently runs from 4 October 2023. Ranking is by the impact score described on the front page — an estimate of how much a story is likely to affect one website, not a measure of how much attention it got.
The archive only holds what it has seen. Periods before it started are empty rather than quiet, and it gets more complete every week it runs.
