In recent years, Google's search rankings have been the subject of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation, as well as an ongoing antitrust investigation by European Union regulators.
Both groups were investigating the notion of Google skewing search results in its own favor.
The latest investigation comes from a new study written by Harvard Business School professor Michael Luca, Columbia Law School Professor Tim Wu, and Yelp's data science team. According to the study, Google is unfairly helping itself.
While the FTC ended their investigation in 2013, The Wall Street Journal recently uncovered an internal 2012 FTC report that found Google used "anti-competitive tactics and abused its monopoly power in ways that harmed Internet users and rivals...".
According to the document, key FTC staff wanted to sue Google but opted not to.
When Yelp learned of this, they decided to make a case against Google by commissioning a study.
In the study, researchers created two separate versions of local search results. The first version showed results that included Google's Local "OneBox." Google states that the "OneBox" shows users exactly what they're looking for at the top of the page, without needing to scroll through numerous links.
The second version was without "OneBox." This version surfaced results that were generated using Google's organic search algorithm.
The team then randomly displayed one of the two sets of results to 2,690 subjects. What they found was that users were 45 percent more likely to actually click through the search results on the second version, which included only organic results. By prizing "OneBox" over organic links, Google is serving up less useful search results, which is therefore damaging to the end user.
While an interesting find, the problem is that most consumers don't care too much, despite being victims of this practice. The only ones capable of influencing any real change would be the FTC, which already opted not to.
