Google search manipulation starves some websites of traffic - englesdoony1936

Google's positioning of its own flight-finding service in explore results is resulting in lower click-through rates for companies that get not bought advertising, reported to a meditate by Harvard University academics.

The study provides data for how Google's placement of its own services amid "constitutive" search results may injury competitors, which is the focus of an ongoing antitrust case between Google and the European Union.

How paid and not-nonrecreational search results are displayed has a powerful sway over consumers, the bailiwick found. Ben Edelman, an associate prof at Harvard Business Schooling, and Zhenyu Lai, a John Harvard doctoral candidate, looked at when Google began inserting its own Fledge Hunting feature, launched in December 2011, into hunt results.

They found that Google chose to reveal Flight Hunt depending on a user's search terms. When Flight Search was displayed, it takes a upper position in the search results, pushing lower set non-paid search results.

The result was an 85 percent increase in click-through rates—a significant measure for advertisers—for freelance advertisements. Non-paid, algorithmically generated hunt results for competing travel agencies dropped 65 percent.

In an question on Tuesday, Edelman said the study showed that Flight Look wasn't necessarily that popular with users. When Flight Look for was displayed, however, users were more credible to click on AdWords, Google's advertizing product.

"Users are flabbergasted to see Google Flying Search," Edelman said. "They weren't expecting it. They don't of necessity like information technology or love they care it, just in the short run, it's not what they thought was going to be there, then they fly to AdWords.

For Google, it's all keen, since the company collects revenue from AdWords.

The study analyzed data from ComScore's Search Planner, which is a database that tracks algorithmic and paid clicks on search engines by users who in agreement to have their web surfing recorded.

Edelman and Lai compared Internet searches performed for four months prior to the launch of Google Flight Hunt and then subsequently it launched from January to April 2012.

If a user searched for a flight in the format "flights to Orlando," Flight Search would be displayed. But if a user searched for "flight to Orlando FL," information technology was non displayed, they wrote.

It wasn't clear why slight query changes triggered the show of Flight Look for. Edelman said it's regular more difficult these days to predict whether Flight Hunt bequeath be displayed.

Only showing Flying Look for caused as much as an 80 percent drop in algorithmic dealings to the fin online move back agencies that had received the most dealings from the search terms used, the academics wrote. By contrast, click-direct rates for paid advertising jumped 160 percent.

They warned that intermediaries such equally Google have a powerful influence over consumers aside ordering search results in differing formats. Edelman aforesaid it makes it much tall for "vertical" search engines such as Yelp, which focuses connected unique types of explore much as restaurants, to compete.

"Google has a massive degree of control and uses that discretion in shipway that services Google's interest but more than less obviously serves new interests like the public or websites," he said.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/451347/google-search-manipulation-starves-some-websites-of-traffic.html

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