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In its early days, Google gave users “ten blue links” in response to a query.
Our analysis of Google’s current results found that it favored its own properties and results, giving them 41 percent of the first page and 63 percent of the first screen.
In its early days, Google gave users “ten blue links” in response to a query.
Our analysis of Google’s current results found that it favored its own properties and results, giving them 41 percent of the first page and 63 percent of the first screen.
2/ @adrjeffries and @LeonYin examined more than 15,000 trending searches and found that Google routinely puts its own products before competitors’ on the search page. https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/28/google-search-results-prioritize-google-products-over-competitors
3/ Non-Google results and links were pushed to the middle and bottom-middle of the first page, where data shows that users are less likely to click.
4/ In one in five searches in our sample, not a single non-Google result or link appeared on the first screen of search results.
5/ Google’s decision to present “answers” and place its products above competitors’ on the search page has led to lawsuits and regulatory fines. A number of websites said it killed their revenues—and their companies.
6/ Google makes five times as much revenue through advertising on its properties as it does selling ads on other websites.
7/ Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is under regulatory scrutiny by 50 U.S. attorneys general and the Department of Justice. Officials in Europe have launched a probe into Google for Jobs.
8/ @SpanishDict is a site that says it suffers under Google’s preferential treatment of its own products. The site is ad-supported and relies on traffic to survive.
9/ Chris Cummings of @SpanishDict says the site gets more than 80 percent of clicks for some queries when it’s the top result but only 2 percent when Google Translate appears above it.
10/ Travel websites also say they have suffered from Google Search’s preferential treatment of its own products. In our tests, queries for airlines by name showed the Google Flights module at the top.
11/ We found Google Flights did not always display the cheapest fares or even all available flights, even when those fares and flights showed up in ITA Matrix—which is owned by Google. https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/28/google-search-results-prioritize-google-products-over-competitors
12/ To parse more than 15,000 Google search results pages, @LeonYin wrote 1,000 lines of code and developed a method that “stains” results in our four categories: Google, non-Google, ads, and AMP.
13/ We examined various alternative ways of categorizing search results. No matter how we sliced it, Google gave itself the most area on the first screen. Google called our methodology "flawed and misleading."
We show our work here: https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/28/how-we-analyzed-google-search-results-web-assay-parsing-tool
We show our work here: https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/28/how-we-analyzed-google-search-results-web-assay-parsing-tool
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Read the full investigation: https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/28/google-search-results-prioritize-google-products-over-competitors
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Read the full investigation: https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/28/google-search-results-prioritize-google-products-over-competitors
Sign up for our newsletter: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/themarkup/
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