With Google bracing for the possibility of a court-mandated breakup after being ruled a monopoly, WalletHub today released a new report with clear evidence showing that Google’s declining search quality is the result of an intentional strategy designed to boost ad revenue. It’s also hurting consumers in the process.
Below, you can check out some highlights from WalletHub’s report. Commentary from a number of experts is included in the report.
- People are noticing quality go downhill. 63% of people think that Google search results were better in a previous year, according to a nationally representative survey conducted by WalletHub.
- Trusting Google’s top results can cost you. Following the recommendations from the top 5 results for credit card and banking terms will cost you $202 on average.
- International results are invading: Websites with information intended for people in the UK, Canada and India routinely show up in U.S. search results for finance queries.
- Monopolies like Google do not have to worry about quality. According to court documents, Google’s internal testing showed that significantly worse search results would not hurt the business.
- Poor quality is good for business. The worse the organic search results are, the more useful the ads become. Plus, the more people have to refine their queries to get to what they need, the more ads they see.
- Deteriorating quality started after Google’s CEO tapped the head of Ads to lead both Search & Ads. Google always had a Church/State separation between their ad business and their organic search. In June 2020, Sundar Pichai decided to change that and align the two initiatives for maximum profit.
“The decline in Google search quality could be the result of poor execution or honest mistakes, but I believe it’s actually an intentional strategy designed to boost advertising revenue. Google didn’t just go from being one of the most sophisticated tech companies in the world to a broken bureaucracy that can’t understand how its own algorithm works overnight. Smart people still work there. They’re just working to maximize ad revenue rather than organizing the world’s information, as was once their claim to fame.
Since Google doesn’t have any real competition, it can make the best information hard to find, forcing users to stay on Google for longer and interact with more ads. This is dangerous for consumers, most of whom think the best results appear first.”
– Odysseas Papadimitriou, WalletHub CEO