The FTC completed an investigation back in 2013 into Google related to anti-trust accusations. The report suggests that Google actually worked to intentionally keep competitors to their online shopping site off of the top search results. They may have also deliberately blacklisted other shopping sites, even though they claim that they did not do this.
The Wall Street Journal obtained a 160 page FTC staff report (you can read their report HERE). The FTC report said that they should move forward with a lawsuit against Google. Instead, they choose to settle the case without moving forward.
Whether settling with Google was the right move or not, this new information that is being discovered in the FTC staff report is quite disturbing.
For example, one part of the Wall Street Journal’s report said, “Google would ‘automatically boost’ its own sites for certain specialized searches that otherwise would favor rivals, the FTC found. If a comparison-shopping site was supposed to rank highly, Google Shopping was placed above it. When Yelp was deemed relevant to a user’s search query, Google Local would pop up on top of the results page.”
Most of what was found may have been deceptive, but not necessarily illegal. In fact, most people know that all search engines will promote their own interests ahead of other companies. The biggest issue for most people will be that they were actually demoting competitors, or essentially black listing them since they would not appear on the first page or two of the SERPs.
The report said, “While Google promoted its own results, it sometimes demoted rivals, the FTC staff found. For example, Google compiled a list of comparison-shopping sites that compete with Google Shopping and “demoted them from the top 10 web results,” staff wrote. According to the report, Google users in tests didn’t like the changes; only after Google tweaked its search algorithm at least four times, and changed the ranking criteria, did the new results get ‘slightly positive’ feedback, the staff said.”
Of course, Google has always said that they do not blacklist websites for competitive reasons. While it is too late to bring any type of lawsuit now, since the FTC has already settled, it is just one more reason why all marketers need to remember that they should never rely on Google for traffic. Google has no scruples about hurting the competition if it benefits them.
