Study Finds Google Search Is Harming Consumers

It’s safe to say many rely on Google to search for all kinds of things, such as product reviews, restaurant reviews, hotel reviews, retailers, and more. In fact it has become somewhat of a habit to turn to Google for our searches, but is that a bad thing? Well according to a recent study, it has been found that Google searches could actually be harming consumers.

This is based on a study by Michael Luca of Harvard Business School and Tim Wu of Columbia Law School. According to their findings, they feel that Google skewers their search results to promote their own links and services, as opposed to actually basing them on relevance, which they feel is anti-competitive.

For example they showed participants in their study two screenshots, one of which showed how Google actually ranks websites at the moment, and the other shows how it should be displayed should Google’s algorithm be used properly. Based on the two screenshots, more users naturally picked the one that was more relevant.

This led them to conclude, “Stated simply, when it comes to local search, Google is presenting its users with a degraded version of its search engine.” It should be noted that the study was actually sponsored by Yelp so in some ways we suppose it isn’t completely impartial, but what do you guys think?

Do you find that you are usually able to find what you’re looking for on Google, or do you think that Google overly promotes its services and products while sacrificing relevancy in the process?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Web
Tags: Google, Legal, study