It may not be the 1st time that someone’s accused search major Google of manipulating search results. This time around, though, a fair amount of research seems to have gone into preparing the charge against it.
The paper authored by Tim Wu, former US Federal Trade Commission adviser, & a handful of other academics + Yelp, presented “evidence” that the search giant manipulated results in a way that it hampered competitors & limited consumers’ options. The charge has sparked off a debate on the Internet, with some siding with Google, saying search results were never meant to neutral because of their very nature, & those against the search engine.
Wu told Website Re/code: “When the facts change, your thinking should change.” The main surprising & “shocking realization”, said Wu, was that Google was not presenting its best product. In fact, it was presenting a version of the product that’s degraded & intentionally worse for consumers, he pointed out.
Wu got some help in his research from local business reviews engine Yelp. Seen as a traditional Google adversary, it built a browser plugin meant to recreate Google’s organic search page stripped of its OneBox, the listings & map pairing Google began inserting in 2009 for searchers that triggers local results. Yelp named this set of alternative search results, “Focus on the User”.
The paper by Wu & the Yelp team titled, Is Google Degrading Search? Consumer Harm From Universal Search”, has said by “manipulating” search results, & leveraging dominance in search to promote internal content, “Google was reducing social welfare, leaving consumers with lower quality results & worse matches.”
Yelp’s study tested its own search page version against Google’s, surveying 2,690 participants. Users clicked through on the map for its version at a 45%. This was proof, claimed Yelp & Wu, that Google’s modus operandi in search denied consumers the best results.
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