Due to subtle tweaks over the years, Google search upgrades have made it harder for companies to drive traffic to their website, Bloomberg reported.
The changes began in 2015 when the internet giant decided to add a fourth ad at the top of search results in effort to “support its mission to organize the world’s information and make it useful and accessible to everyone.”
While good for Google’s revenue, the changes have been bad for business owners who rely on the platform to reach customers. Not only is it more difficult to get traffic, it is also costlier, the report stated.
With a monopoly of nearly 85 percent of the U.S. search market, Google is being taken to court by the government in an antitrust case over pushing regulations.
When the company went public in 2004, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote, “Our search results are the best we know how to produce. They are unbiased and objective.” The company promised ads would be few and the goal was to get users “out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible.”
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Regulators say this is no longer the case as data from digital marketing company Jumpshot showed users spent more time on Google than other websites for the first time last summer.
“We’ve passed a milestone in Google’s evolution from search engine to walled-garden,” said Rand Fishkin, a business advisor who specializes in Google’s search engine. “They used to be the good guys.”
Clicks on ads have more than tripled and click on free websites have dropped significantly, according to Fishkin.
Entrepreneur Mike Moloney has seen the impact firsthand. As owner of FilterGrade, a custom photo filter company, he’s noticed Google using his images in search results, yet directing traffic to one of their ad pages as opposed to his site.
“They’re doing a good job of making it subtle, almost like it’s an accident half the time,” Moloney told Bloomberg.
As Google makes record profits of billions of dollars, business owners like Moloney and e-commerce entrepreneur Kevin Hickey are paying more in ad revenue and struggling to stay afloat.
“The prices that consumers are paying are now higher because of Google’s business model,” Hickey told Bloomberg.
