According to a report from Visual Object, more than three-quarters of consumers (76%) will search for a company website before visiting their physical location – and this even before the Covid-19 pandemic. Consider the growth of more “online” visits now as a result. Essentially, if a website, especially in such intentional search like “search *something* me”, doesn’t appear as result in the first Google page, that business don’t exist in the market and its competition will overtake.
This is why it is essential to stay updated and informed about the latest changes of the most important Search Engines, basically we are talking about Google with a market share of 82%, especially in recent times of continuos new legislation and set of rules within the EU.
And we know the European Union doesn’t go easy on the giant Tech companies, like Google. In aiming to protect European open market the EU enacted the so called “Digital Market Act” (DMA) that is aim to bring compliance and fairness within large tech companies online, also called “Gatekeepers” (if anyone is interested, this article from Cookiebot explains what is the DMA very well).
The DMA came into legislation in March 2024 and penalties for violating the regime can scale up to 10% of global annual turnover (or 20% for repeat offenders).
The DMA’s main objectives are the following:
- Give users more choice over default apps and services
- Allow alternative app stores
- Mandate interoperability between messaging services
- Ban self-preferencing in rankings
- Require consent for targeted ads
- Improve data transparency.
As one of the Gatekeeper, Google, has been making changes announcing that they are preparing to the compliance of the new regulations. In this blog post they announced them and here I reviewed the two most relevant:
- Additional consent for linked services: “Over the next few weeks, we will be presenting European users with an additional consent banner to ask them whether some services can continue to share data for those purposes. If services aren’t linked, some features may be limited or unavailable. Users can change their choices anytime in their Google Account settings.” They are referring to the link between various services still provided by Google but theoretically needing a new consent every time:
- Search
- YouTube
- Ad services
- Google Play
- Chrome
- Google Shopping
- Google Maps
It seems like the Platform is going to limit the usability of a certain websites if certain “services” will not be accepted. According to Google “You can choose to link all these services, choose to have none of these services linked or choose which of these individual services you want to link.” The DMA wants to ensure that, for example, the visibility of some apps in Google Play will not be compromised because of not having accepted the consent to track the GPS tracking consent in Google Maps and viceversa.
“When Search, YouTube and Chrome are not linked services, your recommendations in Search, like ‘What to watch’ and your Discover feed will be less personalised“
To my understanding, this feature means exactly the opposite of the intent of the DMA, which is to guarantee and ensure transparency and fairness to the users besides the authorization of their data within the platform. It will be interesting to see how they can ensure two scopes that are on the opposite front.
- New Search Experience: If you click “Hotels near me” and you are in one the the EEA (European economic Area) countries you will now have a new “Search experience” with more “promotional” results than before, with series of carousels (a carousel is a list-like rich result that you can swipe through on desktop devices) showing photos and preview cards of the sites. Furthermore Google shows several more “digital ecosystems” , also with the scope of enriching the possible results from the search of such businesses.
According to Google, such as carousel-style rich, aggregator units “present users with rich and relevant information for their searches” and “improve the visibility of ecosystem participants.” What they mean with “digital ecosystem” is the interconnected network of different digital entities that interact with each other to create value. Examples of digital ecosystems include online marketplaces (such as Amazon or eBay), social media platforms (such as Facebook or Twitter), app stores (such as the Apple App Store or Google Play Store), and Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems (such as smart home devices interconnected via a central hub).
The missing possibilities to keep the consent across services might prevent the “Google Search” to produce results based on the exact GPS location or user preferences. For example, based on YouTube videos history, Google might be able to understand age and consequently possible favorite places
Attention! The carousel type results depend on web pages having the appropriate structured data markup (basically how the website is programmed) to support the “carousel” format. Without that markup, pages will continue showing the standard text search results, which could be a loss in the visibility compared with competitors.
Example of Box Interfaces US vs Germany (Source)
Why is Google going this? As explained a recent article from techcrunch.com, Google has decided to discontinue the automatic linking of personal data across user accounts for specific products. This practice, which was previously employed to customize content and advertisements, will no longer be the default setting. This pro-privacy change is happening because the DMA bans the use of people’s data for advertising without their consent.
Google is exploring alternative methods for presenting web page results that maintain high rankings and do not require additional investment in other platforms. It’s important to acknowledge the rise of digital ecosystems such as Booking.com, which offer alternative avenues for promotional investment, potentially reducing dependence solely on Google.
The Diary of a digital Journey 