As Reuters reported, the tech giant on Tuesday (Sept. 8) introduced changes to its online search results to satisfy European Union (EU) antitrust regulators.
An official for the company told Reuters the changes represent the biggest drop in the quality of its search engine’s service in its 29-year history, and will favor price comparison sites like Expedia and Booking.com.
Those sites get more prominence in search results than companies in those sectors who are listed with just a link to their websites, mailing address and telephone numbers, the report said.
Google was fined $534 million in July after the European Commission (EC) found the company had favored its own services in shopping, hotels, transport and sports results in search results in violation of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).
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The commission gave Google 60 days to comply with the DMA or risk periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of its total global turnover. PYMNTS has contacted the EC seeking comment but has not yet gotten a reply.
According to the report, the updated search results will spotlight one specialized search engine at the top of the page, followed by two others with fewer details. A collection of — to use Reuters’ example — hotels, airlines and restaurants will sit below them, minus key features such as real-time prices. Google’s algorithm will determine the rankings.
“To comply with DMA requirements, we’re making significant changes to Search in Europe,” Nick Fox, Google’s senior vice-president, knowledge and information, said in a statement to Reuters. “These changes degrade the user experience for Europeans – boosting online intermediaries at the expense of local businesses, and removing helpful features people rely on every day. Users outside the EU will not be impacted by these changes.”
Per the report, Google has said previous changes to comply with the DMA led to a 30% decrease in free, direct booking traffic to European businesses. It also says tests of the changes showed millions of European users were largely dissatisfied with having to retype queries to find what they want.
In related news, Google said last week it had adjusted its site reputation policy in the European Economic Area (EEA) following discussions with the EC.
Google introduced the policy in 2024 to prevent third-party content from being published on a trusted website to use that website’s reputation to appear higher in search, which it says lessens search quality as well as the user experience.
The EC began investigating the policy last year to determine if it violated the DMA by demoting news media and other publishers’ content in search results because they feature content from the publishers’ commercial partners.
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