How Much Is Google Messing With Search Results?

How much is Google messing with search results? A lot, claims Tim Wu, a legal scholar and former FTC adviser. In a 46-page, Yelp-funded study, Wu and coauthor Michael Luca, a Harvard Business School economist, explain how Google knowingly manipulates search results.

“The main surprising and shocking realization is that Google is not presenting its best product. In fact, it’s presenting a version of the product that’s degraded and intentionally worse for consumers,” said Wu to Re/code. “This is the closest I’ve seen Google come to [being] the Microsoft case,” he added.

How do Yelp and Wu prove Google’s wrongdoing? Google rival Yelp tested a “Focus on the User” search page version against Google’s, surveying 2,690 participants. It found that users clicked through on the map for its version at a 45 percent higher rate.

“The easy and widely disseminated argument that Google’s universal search always serves users and merchants is demonstrably false,” the study reads. “Instead, in the largest category of search (local intent-­based), Google appears to be strategically deploying universal search in a way that degrades the product so as to slow and exclude challengers to its dominant search paradigm.”

The FTC, which has been in the line of fire for not addressing staff concerns that Google’s search bias was inconclusive, has declined to comment to Re/code.

Google, which is facing the same accusation by the European Union, has always denied manipulation, instead arguing that it has a right to display information the way it deems fit because it is a matter of free speech, as nsnbc international reports. The European Commission, on the other hand, believes its SMEs are at a disadvantage within search results and wants this unfair competition to disappear all together. In July, Google will have to officially respond to the EU’s complaint. If it chooses not to settle, the case could get tied up in court for years.

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