Maria (Boux) Morganti Avatar

The Diary of a digital Journey

Tag: seo

  • Latest News from Google to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA)

    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 Website- a whole world around a url

    Why relaunch a website? Here the most important reasons:

    • The infrustructure is old: our website is based on an old Drupal set-up that is more than 5 years old. This is like preistoric ages for websites and it does not sustain new features at all, like the implementation of new layouts or the automatic translation through plug-ins. This alone is a big enough reason to plan the relaunch
    • The Structure of topics is not reflecting the company structure anymore. In the last years the company went through an internal restructuring with changing some of segmentation and categorization. Especially the market orientation should be now reflecting on the sitemap
    • We need a clear distinction between Corporate topics and Products. And within Products area we need different moodboards. This is a new requirement and not possible to implement in the existing pages / template.
    • The Partner (so-called web agency). Yes, let’s talk about the agencies. I know, this is always a taboo topic as most of the time who write about such topics are agencies themselves. Well, I want to touch this because this was one of the reason why I wanted so hardly to relaunch the website: the web agency is not supporting you how a web agency should do and this is creating delay in solving issues and low trust from our internal stakeholders.

    Why now? I started as I said several years ago and the website is to these days still there. This is when the reality comes into play. Sometimes in medium/large companies the possibilities to act and make the needed changes are not always happening as we plan, in the timing we’d wish and often is really no one’s fault, it is the way times are. Internal priorities and changes made it possible to start only this year really and from the first action to the launch the window is very long.

    What we did this year:

    • Ensure everyone knows the “Why” : I explained the reasons, earlier. Those were discussed internally with different stakeholders, to make sure we really are all conviced. If the people that will have to work with us and will have to dedicate their time and energy for the website are not more than 100% convinced that this is needed than we have a problem. In my case I was lucky that everyone understood and clearly saw it, but I can image it could be a challenge if not everyone understands the need to relaunch a website
    • Understand the Requirement: what should a website do?
      • Multi-language obviously, but how? Should it be by default in english and then translated or should it stand-along whatever language we need
      • Easy to use and centralized vs. flexible and customize but needs higher level of skills to learn
      • Should it be able to have a library and act as “PMI” or “DAM” to facilitate and connect different stakeholders who will work on it, or will it be “just” a collection of files displayed in a correct way to promote and create knowledge.
    • The Goal and Target-Groups
      • The Goal of a website varies and not all companies and products share the same goal. I will explain this in another(s) posts but surely this is a very critical point but I summarize following points, stolen from my friend ChatGPT but articulated by me:
      • Online Presence:
        • “A website serves as a digital storefront that provides information about the company, its products, and services”. Of course, thank you. And I add, it is, in many cases, the first place that people find about a company. If we talk about single product, it might not be the same as product are more and more creating their own “digital images” throughout various channels. But companies, yes I do believe that companies reflect in their corporate website.
      • Brand Visibility and Recognition:
        • “Increasing brand awareness and recognition by creating a visually appealing and consistent online representation of the company.” I am not sure about this. I think the website it’s part of the brand visibility but surely not the only one. In this regards, in B2B especially, press and clippings online are still king.
      • Communication and Information:
        • “Providing a platform for effective communication with customers, clients, partners, and other stakeholders. This includes sharing important information about the company, updates, news, and contact details.” Again, yes but. Sharing information is definitely done throughout various channels, some of them not even online (I think about shareholders meetings often not even public). Probably for public companies it is true that some information are mandatory to be made available but medium-small size not public companies really don’t share so much in their online presence. As I am a fun of communicating and transparency, I do believe that websites should show more about their real character of a company, not necessarily with “insights” confidential or critical information but with meaningful information about the processes and the true added value of a company or even a department and especially real people sharing their experiences
      • Lead Generation / Sales facilitator:
        • “Generating leads and potential customers by encouraging visitors to submit their contact information through forms, newsletters, or other engagement mechanisms.” We enter the space of using the website as a sales tool or part of a sales journey, which is exactly the purpose of this journey that I am about to start. I could write pages about this, but for now I can say that historically websites were not considered in any way as a way to attract customers or generate sales opportunities. Unless the business was completely digital and the website is intrinsically connected to the journey (for example as e-commerce) otherwise in my experience the connection between the online presence of a company and the generation new customers or new businesses is something still not common, at least in B2B. This is due to many reasons, mainly one big aspect revolves around trade-shows still are the key touch-point for this ( I will do a post only about that as I have very strong opinion about the monopolistic approach of the whole trade-shows system). Not to mention that the personal relation seller-buyers are still very valuable, especially because the sale of a B2B product normally requires a series of services attached that should all be managed through a series of people within companies so that the “sales person” become basically a “project manager” less worry about selling but busier in making sure what is sold actually delivers to customers.

    In the next posts I will talk about what steps I took in the relaunch of the website especially focusing on:

    • Update CMS with new standards
    • Modernize Design & Look
    • Change structure reflecting new market-orientation
    • Create a Corporate and Products website
    • Set-up Templates for Products pages / Landing Pages

    Stay Tune!