Thought Leadership
In order to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act requirements, Google will prioritize comparison portals in the future and strip real-time features from search results.
Google is fundamentally adapting the display of its search results in the European Economic Area to comply with the requirements of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). The law prohibits major technology corporations from favoring their own products and services over third-party offerings in ranking results.
Focus on comparison services and stripped real-time features
- Favoring aggregators: Specialized comparison and search engines like Expedia or Hotels.com will move to the top of the results page in the future. A carousel featuring individual offers from hotels, airlines, or restaurants will be placed below them.
- Elimination of direct features: To avoid preferential treatment of its own tools, Google is removing useful direct features from business listings, including real-time pricing information.
- Algorithms determine ranking: The exact placement of specialized comparison services continues to be determined by Google’s algorithms.
Google’s criticism of the impact on businesses
The US corporation views the adjustments as a significant limitation for end consumers and local service providers. Previous DMA-driven changes to the search interface had already led to a decline of around 30 percent in free, direct booking traffic for European businesses.
“These changes degrade the user experience for people in Europe – boosting online intermediaries at the expense of local businesses, and removing helpful features people rely on every day.”
Nick Fox, Senior Vice President of Knowledge & Information at Google
The European Commission had given Google a deadline of 60 days to stop self-preferencing in search results.
(Editorial Team)
