As it tries to balance requests from price comparison websites and hotels in order to comply with EU tech standards, Google warned on Thursday that a return to the structure of ten blue links in search results from years ago might diminish user traffic to hotels.
In recent months, Alphabet (GOOGL.O) has announced a number of modifications to search result layouts in response to competing requests from small businesses, hotels, airlines, and price comparison websites. The company also establishes a new tab unit. It is making an effort to abide by the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which forbids it from giving preference to its own goods and services on its database.
In Germany, Belgium, and Estonia, it tried its previous format of ten blue links per page last month. It stated that if it cannot agree with its competitors, it may have to adopt this alternative.
According to Google, the test, which concluded last week, demonstrated that the previous format was detrimental to both hotels and users.
Finding hotels took longer for people, requiring them to conduct additional searches, and they were measurably less happy with the outcomes of their searches. Additionally, more consumers gave up and failed to locate what they were looking for,” said Competition Legal Director Oliver Bethell in a statement.
“In general, fewer people visited hotels and middleman websites. More than 10% of traffic was lost by hotels, impacting hundreds of thousands of Europeans hotels.
“Intermediary site traffic remained relatively flat,” he said.
The business will now ask the European Commission for input on how to resolve the issue.
Google’s declaration was made a day after over 20 price comparison websites criticized the company’s most recent plan, claiming that it had disregarded their suggestions and that EU antitrust authorities need to impose penalties on the business for violating the DMA.
