Similarly, when users search for “TripAdvisor Hilton” Google’s own maps were pushed above along with an option to see how much each branch of the hotel chain cost. Google, however, is pleading innocence, and claims that its search results are being hampered by a bug that it’s trying to squish. They noted that mobile search results for their company and services on Google buried their links way beneath the results provided by the Internet giant itself. “Far from a glitch, this is a pattern of behaviour by Google”, he said.
Advertisement
Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman shared a screenshot of a Google search for query “tripadvisor hilton” and showed how no results from TripAdvisor was on the top.
To date, the changes to Google Search have been incremental and hard to pin down as bias, but that all changed over the weekend as the firm’s latest “code push” clearly prioritizes Google’s own local search above all others even when the query specifically mentioned a rival company such as Yelp and Trip Advisor. “Google is now intentionally providing the wrong answers for local searches on the mobile Web”, said Stoppelman.
In a Twitter tweet he wrote “Gimme a break, @google. This is not good for consumers or for competition but good for maintaining Google’s monopoly”. Given the company’s state of turmoil in this area, as it has historically faced online traffic-manipulating cases in other countries, such discreet practices in local searches would not be a wise move.
The European Commission on competition has effectively declared war on the company and plans to investigate each element of the firm’s business. It is good timing for Yelp though, who have been arguing with authorities, that something needs to be done about Google in this respect.
In the case of Yelp, according to internal documents, around one third of search terms including “yelp” followed by a place of interest would end in Google diverting customers to its own result.
Advertisement
Travis Katz, CEO of travel website Gogobot piled in with support for Stoppelman’s misgivings. However, unless Yelp decides to take Google to court once again, the fact remains that this is a programming error or a bug that will be rectified soon; we just don’t know when exactly.
