Amy Gesenhues says, “According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, researchers from Columbia University and Harvard Business School claim Google is delivering a “degraded version of its search engine,” outranking its own services over more relevant results for local searches on restaurants and hotels.

In a study sponsored by Yelp – one of the companies listed as a complainant in the EU antitrust case against Google, former FTC advisor Tim Wu from Columbia Law School and Harvard Business School’s Michael Luca found, when given the option, users were more likely to click on results ranked by relevancy versus results that gave preference to Google’s self promoted content.

Wu and Luca surveyed 2,500 Internet users, randomly delivering two sets of results for local-intent searches to determine which links users preferred. One page showed search results ranked purely on relevancy using Google’s algorithm, with links from review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor prominently displayed“.

Study Claims Google Is Delivering “Degraded” Search Results, Adding Steam To EU Antitrust Case

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