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Google now has to comply with the new French law and remove snippets from their search results for European press publications. Google wrote about it in French over here. With that, some publishers are getting notified of this removal via Search Console.
The Search Console notifications are in English and read. Site name was designated a European press publication by Search Console. It goes on to read:
Dear website owner,Google systems have designated domain.tld a European press publication, as designed by EU Directive 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the digital single market. In the wake of a new copyright law transposing this Directive in France, this designation removes the display of text snippets, video previews, and thumbnail images from your property or properties in France. This is an advance notification; changes in Google Search will not occur until late October 2019.
If you would like these previews to be displayed in search results for your property, you can use HTML tags to customize how Google Search displays your content to Search users. Alternatively, if you think this designation is incorrect, you can change it as described below.
Here is a screen shot of the email:
Maybe this bug we saw where Google was not showing anything but URLs, was a test to see how this may look in France?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
