During the ongoing antimonopoly process against Google, new information has come to light that sheds light on the company’s search algorithm practices. An employee’s certificate revealed a key document on the projector, showing an internal slide about changes in the algorithm, as reported by Wired.
The slide in question pertained to “semantic correspondence” in the SERP algorithm. While users expect the search engine to include synonyms and natural language processing, it seems that Google goes a step further and actually modifies search queries to generate more commercial results.
For a long time, there have been suspicions that Google manipulates advertising prices, but it has now become evident that the company also disregards consumer interests. The supposedly “sacred” organic results, also known as “10 blue links,” are merely another tool to boost Google’s profits.
Google allegedly makes billions of changes each day across trillions of different variations. For example, if a user searches for “children’s clothing,” Google may tweak the query to “Clothing for children of the Nikolai brand” to prioritize profitability over relevance.
Why does Google engage in such practices? Firstly, modified queries are more likely to generate purchase-focused results. Secondly, these altered queries automatically trigger advertisements, which businesses like TJ Maxx pay Google for clicks.
While this system benefits Google due to its dominant market position, it ultimately degrades the search engine’s quality for users and increases costs for advertisers.
The full extent and frequency of Google’s manipulations are unclear, but this approach is both cunning and ambitious. While many scammers employ bait tactics, Google goes a step further by manipulating search queries to create an illusion of delivering the best search results.
Even if Google prevails in the antimonopoly process, the company’s issues are likely to persist. During the court proceedings, a senior Google representative mentioned the “Treaty with Users” and “Policy of Honest Results.” However, disregarding user expectations in the long run is unlikely to be beneficial.