Google will change Search results in Europe following complaints from businesses about the decline in traffic to their sites and the threat of fines from European regulators.
According to the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), Google prohibits favoring its products and services on its platform. The law, which came into force last year, aims to limit the monopoly of large technologies.
Since then, Google Search has been trying to meet the demands of price comparison sites, hotels, airlines, and small retailers. The latter three groups said that due to Google’s recent changes, the number of conversions to direct bookings for their products fell by 30%.
In this regard, and to comply with the DMA, Google is proposing more changes to its European search engine. The changes include expanded and uniformly formatted results that allow users to choose between comparison sites and merchant sites, new formats that will enable competitors to display prices and images on their sites, and new ad units for comparison sites.
For search results in Germany, Belgium, and Estonia, Google also plans to remove the map showing hotel locations and return to the old “ten blue links” format as part of a short test to gauge user interest in this innovation.
A DMA violation can cost a company up to 10% of its annual global turnover.
