Google Blames EU DMA Changes for Largest Reduction in Search Quality
Google has released its Digital Markets Act (DMA) changes in Europe, which it claims have resulted in the largest reduction in quality of service at the world's most popular internet search engine in its 29-year history.
The changes affect vertical search services (VSS), such as Expedia and Booking.com, giving them more prominence in search results over companies listed with just a link to their websites.
According to Google, this change has resulted in the largest reduction in quality of service ever seen by the company. It claims that people were measurably less satisfied with their search results, took longer to find hotels, and gave up more often due to not finding what they were looking for.
In its testing of these changes in 2024, Google found that traffic to hotels and intermediary sites went down, with hotels losing over 10% of their traffic, affecting hundreds of thousands of European hotels.