Google is testing a new design for search results for flights, trains, hotels, restaurants and products in the EU, which is expected to help smaller businesses get more traffic. However, review site Yelp says the changes have had the opposite effect.
According to Yelp’s research, the new design delivers results by placing data from Google Maps at the top of the page below the search bar and a new widget with images and links to websites like Yelp at the bottom. Experiments showed that nearly 73% of about 500 people clicked on results that kept them in the Google ecosystem — up from 55% before the design update and tests with a smaller group of 250 people.
In another variation of the design, where a window with review websites was placed at the top, only 44% of people stayed with Google, the rest chose an alternative. Yelp has already approached EU regulators with a proposal to follow the second option — to get “fair results.”
- For violation of EU antimonopoly legislation (which is now called the strictest in the world), companies may be required to pay a fine of 10% of annual sales.
Google’s Rory O’Donoghue, meanwhile, says the more than 20 changes made to the search engine in response to the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) instead give more opportunities for services like Yelp to show up in results.
“To assume otherwise is simply wrong,” he says.
According to O’Donoghue, Google’s testing of different designs showed that clicks to review sites, on the contrary, increased — all at the cost of some airlines and restaurants facing a drop in visits.
Other Google divisions affected by the law, such as Android, Chrome and Maps, and other companies such as Apple, Meta and Amazon, have not yet made public all of their compliance plans. But a coalition of thousands of smaller companies, including encryption software maker Proton and Norwegian media company Schibsted, say those disclosed so far do not actually comply with the DMA.
Source: Ars Technica
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