What Does the Google Antitrust Case Mean for Your Business?

WeBuildWednesdays #37 – What Does the Google Antitrust Case Mean for Your Business?

Interesting news lately for those who’ve been following. Google has been told that the Department of Justice is investigating them under antitrust concerns. So, what we’re talking about today is what the Google antitrust case could mean for your business.

What Google Antitrust Case Means for Business

The first and most relevant thing in this context is the Google search engine. Google has a variety of other products, but the search engine makes up about 85 percent of Google’s revenue. It’s also the area where Google has the biggest monopoly. According to recent statistics, Google has 90 percent of search share in the United States and 95 percent worldwide.

That’s crazy to think about, considering that Google has a lesser percentage in China since it’s banned there (Baidu is China’s biggest search engine). Nonetheless, Google has 95 percent search share worldwide.

What does this mean?

 

1) More Traffic

I want to read you a recent tweet. This came from Google Search Liaison, which is a great account to follow on Twitter if you’re interested at all in Google search. They release a lot of information to the public through this account, and again, that’s Google Search Liaison. This tweet came out on June 6th and says:  

“Have you ever done a search and gotten many listings all from the same site in the top results? We’ve heard your feedback about this and wanting more variety. A new change now launching in Google search is designed to provide more site diversity in our results…”

“This site diversity change means that you usually won’t see more than two listings from the same site in our top results. However, we may still show more than two in cases where our systems determine it’s especially relevant to do so for a particular search…”

There’s a little bit more to that. You can check out the full series of tweets if you’re interested.

The rest of it is not as important, but as far as what this could mean—especially for local businesses—is that you could potentially get more clicks to your site than previously. Google is already responding to this antitrust case. They don’t want to get hit with anything big from the Department of Justice, so they’re taking some action already.

By limiting sites to two spots on the search engine results page, that will free up space for local businesses quite a bit. Right now, I’m sure if you search, “best marketing agencies in Naperville, Illinois,” you’ll see Yelp probably within the first four results. That’s going to change. Yelp will no longer be the first four results. You’ll have a much better chance of ranking.

Obviously, it’s hard to compete with Yelp. They have a ton of authority. That’s always a difficult one and a lot of our local clients ask us about that. But if they’re limited to two spots, this frees up some real estate, and we’ve got some room to compete now—which is great!

2) More Visible Credit

The other thing is the rich listings that show on the search engine results page. Oftentimes, you’ll search for a knowledge panel, or something like that, to find the site in which the result pulls from. Google doesn’t really do a great job of citing their sources when pulling information and putting it directly on the search engine results page.

I would not be surprised to see that functionality change a bit so that Google gives more credit, or at least visible credit, to these websites, pushing more traffic to them. Going after featured snippets, rich listings, and search is going to be bigger for businesses in the future than previously.

 

3) More Room for Other Video Platforms

The last thing I’m going to talk about in regards to this tweet is that YouTube currently makes up 92 percent of all video results that show up on the Google search engine.  

Google owns YouTube (I think we all know that).

But, there’s also Vimeo, Dailymotion, and a variety of other video sites out there. However, for SEO purposes, you put all your videos on YouTube. I don’t think that’s going to change. You’re should keep all your videos on YouTube, but now, it might not hurt to start putting your videos on Vimeo as well. It’s just another chance of ranking.

If Google can only show two results from YouTube, they’ve got to start showing other video sites. Those video sites might be where you want to start getting a little traction. If you can get an early start on building a good following on these platforms, that’s only going to benefit you even more in the long run.

 

What We Know About the Antitrust Case

As far as what we know about the antitrust case? Not much. It might amount to nothing. Microsoft was investigated similarly in about 2013 and they just got a slap on the wrist—nothing really happened.  The same thing could happen for Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple too—they’re all looking to be investigated. We’ll see. We’ll keep tabs on it and let you know. The biggest thing now is that Google issued a public statement on this, so these changes will likely happen. Be ready. Get your videos on other platforms. Hopefully, you start seeing yourself on these results.

 

Screw Yelp, am I right?

 

Thanks! Bye.

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