Report from Reuters
In Brief – ActMeraki, a German media company, has complained to EU antitrust regulators that a Google anti-spam policy that penalizes websites that sell part of their websites to other companies to improve the search results for the third-party content is an anticompetitive abuse of their dominant search service. Major European publisher and media trade groups are also calling for regulatory action against Google’s “site reputation abuse policy”. The search giant claims that their policy targets a practice dubbed “parasite SEO” in search optimization circles where an established publisher website sells to third parties the ability to independently publish their own content on a branch of the publisher’s main site so that the third-party page does better in Google’s search algorithm by riding on the host site’s established search ranking. A Google spokesperson defended the anti-spam policy saying, “We’ve heard very clearly from users that site reputation abuse – commonly referred to as ‘parasite SEO’ – leads to a bad search experience for users, and this policy update helps to crack down on this behavior.” ActMeraki says Google “continues to unilaterally set the rules of doing business online in its own favor, preferencing its own commercial offerings and depriving competing service providers of any visibility.”
Context – The “fairness” of Google search results has been a morass plaguing the Internet ecosystem for more than 20 years. Every algorithm change benefits some websites while others feel aggrieved. The European Commission’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) regulators spent a year reviewing Google’s plans to change search to mollify specialized “vertical search” services such as for flights, hotels, and local services, hearing complaints from all sides in stakeholder meetings, as every change means some sites fall as others rise. Google’s plan was eventually rejected. Talks will continue. And throughout, Google argues that they make changes to the complex search black box to benefit users. The EU regulators appear set to get into the mix and resolve disputes over how Google’s search service should operate. Search as a regulated utility.