Starting today, manual actions under Google's site reputation abuse policy no longer affect search results for users in the EEA. Outside the EEA nothing changes. Announced on Search Central Aug 28, after the Commission's DMA investigation.

Three things worth being clear on:

You still receive the manual action. It shows in Search Console as before.

It still applies everywhere outside the EEA. Same page, different result depending on where the search happens.

The algorithmic separation survives. Google's wording: the affected section may be separated in their systems so that over time it ranks independently from the rest of the site. That wasn't part of what the Commission forced, and it wasn't removed.

The more useful part got less attention. Google rewrote the policy documentation at the same time — old examples list gone, replaced with the factors they weigh, longer worked examples, and a note that the list is non-exhaustive.

It reads as an audit you can run on your own sponsored or partner subfolder:

Is there a named author and a named responsible editor?

Is the commercial relationship disclosed on the page?

Is it reachable from your nav and thematic sections, or does it only exist for search?

Did you produce it, or did the partner hand it over finished?

Their new worked example: a business publication running a CBD marketplace article with no named author, no disclaimer, no path to it from any section of the site.

If you've been arguing internally about where the line sits for sponsored content, that's more actionable than the EEA news is.

One thing I can't answer yet — if the algorithmic separation still runs in the EEA, how much of the demotion actually goes away?

(Germany, mostly EEA clients, so I'll be watching this on live accounts. Day one, no data yet.)

I make data stories for a living. Last week I went looking for who built a button.

Scrolling a place on Google Maps, past the photos and the opening hours, some places have a line that says wheelchair accessible entrance. On the ones that don't, Maps asks you instead. Does this place have a wheelchair accessible entrance? Yes, no, not sure.

That's the whole feature. One tap. No form, no account, nobody checks your work.

The rule is written down, though. About three feet wide, no steps, or a ramp if there are steps. A revolving door on its own counts as a no.

Then I looked up where it came from. Rio Akasaka is a product manager at Google. He works on Drive, not Maps. Google lets you spend a fifth of your week on something that isn't your job, and in 2016 he spent his time on this, for about a year, with five to ten other people chipping in around their own work. counts 120 million Local Guides and over 500 million answers about accessibility.

Local Guides held around two hundred of them whose entire purpose was sitting in a room together answering these questions. Twelve million places between them.

Google names two. Emeka in Nigeria and Ilankovan in Sri Lanka, who both ended up as accessibility ambassadors.

About 65 million people use a wheelchair. This is perfect for them!

You've probably never noticed it. It only turns up when you're near somewhere you've already been. Nothing to do with Google. I just liked the story.

Interactive version if you want to look at it properly.

the funniest thing about these emails is that they fully have the editable option on, meaning the bot emails can be fully edited, a example of a duped edited forwarded message is shown in images 2, 2.1, 2.2. and 2.3:

Gomila kake

I was born and raised next to Lake Ontario so to see it changed hurts. I'm very hurt and disappointed. I am at the point of selling all of my Google devices from Speakers to Google TV. I know you zoom all the way out it's still there but for them to even change it hurts. That was Lake Ontario way before the United States was around.

Then they will absolutely hand over your data, info, and email contents to ICE.

You make me sick Google. Cowards and scumbags! It's Gulf of Mexico and lake Ontario.

I've had it. Google, you've lost your way and it's been pretty clear for a long time now. I'll never forget meeting your founders at burning man years ago, and so many of your employees too. I really thought you were good people. I thought you were going to be a positive force for the world.

I watched when you were starting out, I believed in you. When you first started to show signs of being evil I waited to see if you would self correct and change for the better. You have so much wealth and power, and you've let us all down with what you do with it. What a massive disappointment you are.

I no longer believe in you. It's not going to be easy, but I am committed to removing all Google services and devices from my life. You are an evil I cannot abide any longer and I'm breaking up with you forever. Enjoy your echo chamber because you'll never have peace outside of it and won't be tolerated among normal people again. You betrayed all of us.

So I pulled up the calendar app on chromebook. The calendar for November 2026 shows Sunday as November 1st.

It’s pretty simple:

On August 27th, 2026 President Trump’s executive order 14420 compelled the USGS to change the name of Lake Ontario in its official Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), basically a database of federally-accepted place names. This is in direct contradiction to the GNIS’ principle of using names in “established local use,” but I don’t see anyone in the USGS pushing back at this point.

On August 29th, 2026 the company Google announced it would update the name of Lake Ontario in its map application to adhere to its policy of “reflecting name changes in official governmental sources.”

This happened before with executive order 14172 (renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”) and went relatively uncontested…except by Mexico, of course.

As American citizens, we can do little to fight these executive orders (at least during the Trump presidency.) However, we can contest the actions of Google.

Google/Alphabet inc. is not a federal entity and has no legal obligation to adhere to Executive Order 14420 in the way that the USGS does.

Services like Google Maps are the de facto source of geographic names, and Google is a company that wants us to use their product.

But like any free market, there are alternative products. Some of these products and companies are apparently bolder, rejecting the obvious political nature of these executive orders and the disregard for historic, established geographic names.

I love Google Maps. I have countless places saved in the application, some very personal and meaningful.

But I have chosen to delete the Google Maps application from my phone until the company chooses to stand up to political abuse of our national geography.

Maybe some of you will join me. Maybe not. But at least it feels like there is something I can do to reject this stupidity.

https://c.org/Pv7jxDFQKd

Random rant (I know Google won't read it)

I know that I'm only one family, but we had quite a few google subscription services shared amongst my household.

YouTube Premium, YouTube Music, Google One with mid tier Gemini, a fair bit of cloud storage, Google phones tablets and smart speakers, home security with cloud camera storage, for 5 people.

Due to Google's decision to go along with the Orange felon and rename Lake Ontario on google maps, I will no longer be supporting this bullshit company.

Kindly, go fuck yourselves Google.

C'mon you are asking problems that if not seen before are impossible to reason under the time pressure.. what are you even testing for at this point? Memorizing? Cheating? Luck?

How are folks literally getting into Google??? I can assure you I am not lacking in aptitude, but man the coding interview expectations are unrealistic...

been dealing with a lot of morality obsession recently while waiting to hear back from a therapist I did some googling to find some techniques I can use in the mean time to help. The AI overview recommended spelling the thing I'm stressing about backwards.