R Pal Google warned on Thursday that reverting to the old search result format with 10 blue links could reduce traffic to hotels, as the company navigates conflicting demands from price comparison websites and the hotel industry in order to comply with EU tech regulations.
In recent months, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has made several adjustments to its search result formats to address the demands of various stakeholders, including price comparison sites, airlines, small retailers, and hotels. These changes are part of the company’s efforts to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which prohibits it from prioritizing its own products and services in search results.
Last month, Google tested the old format of 10 blue links per page in Germany, Belgium, and Estonia. The company said this format might become necessary if it cannot reach an agreement with its competitors. However, the results from this test, which concluded this week, showed that the old format was detrimental to both users and hotels.
According to Oliver Bethell, Director of Competition Legal at Google, the test revealed that people were less satisfied with their search results and took longer to find hotels, often requiring multiple searches. Many users gave up without finding what they were looking for. As a result, traffic to hotels and intermediary sites declined. Hotels, in particular, saw more than a 10% drop in traffic, which impacted hundreds of thousands of European hotels, while traffic to intermediary sites remained mostly unchanged.
Google now plans to consult the European Commission for further feedback on how to resolve the issue. This announcement comes a day after more than 20 price comparison websites criticized Google’s latest proposal, accusing the company of disregarding their feedback and urging EU antitrust regulators to take action for non-compliance with the DMA.
