SEO professionals don\u2019t agree on much. But over the past decade, we\u2019ve come together around the conviction that Google has abused its dominant position, that it systematically favors its own products over better alternatives, and that something must be done to create fairer competition in search.\u00a0<\/p>
In 2022, the European Union passed the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a sweeping regulation designed to curb the power of tech giants. It came into force in March 2024. <\/p>
Industry groups celebrated. Trade publications ran optimistic headlines about a new era of digital fairness.<\/p>
In 2024, I wrote that it was \u201ca much-needed piece of legislation.\u201d\u00a0Two years in, the evidence is clear: The DMA will do more harm than good.<\/p>
Well-documented abuses\u00a0<\/h2>
The Digital Markets Act arose from understandable frustrations with well-documented abuses.\u00a0<\/p>
Google spent years ranking its own shopping service at the top of search results while systematically burying competitors like Foundem and Kelkoo on page four, where nobody would ever find them.\u00a0<\/p>
The company\u2019s internal documents, uncovered by EU investigators, revealed that Google Shopping \u201csimply doesn\u2019t work\u201d on its merits, so Google gave it an algorithmic boost unavailable to anyone else.\u00a0<\/p>
The travel industry watched as Google Flights consumed the market share of innovative startups like Hipmunk, which had offered genuinely better user experiences by showing total trip costs, including baggage fees and connections.\u00a0<\/p>
Hoteliers saw Google Hotels siphon away direct bookings. Local businesses watched as Google prioritized its local pack over organic results. <\/p>
The pattern was unmistakable: Google identified lucrative verticals, launched competing products, then used its search monopoly to guarantee their success.<\/p>
These weren\u2019t competitive advantages but unfair tactics, and the EU was right to identify them as such. It took over 10 years to fine Google \u00a32.1 billion for the shopping search abuse alone. The DMA was supposed to fix this by setting clear rules upfront, forcing gatekeepers to treat all services equally before abuses could take root.\u00a0<\/p>
For those of us who had watched clients lose traffic to Google\u2019s vertical search engines despite having superior content, the promise was intoxicating: Finally, algorithmic neutrality. Finally, fair competition based on content quality rather than corporate ownership. Finally, a chance for the next generation of search-dependent businesses to compete.<\/p>
Dig deeper: EU puts Google\u2019s AI and search data under DMA spotlight<\/em><\/strong><\/p> Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up<\/span>. <\/p> The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. <\/p> <\/p><\/div> Start Free Trial<\/span> <\/p> Get started with<\/p> Yet, two years into implementation, the reality looks nothing like the promise. The most comprehensive assessment comes from Nextrade Group, which surveyed 5,000 European consumers across twenty member states in mid-2025.\u00a0<\/p> The findings?\u00a0<\/p> Two-thirds of respondents reported needing more clicks or more complex search queries to find what they need online. Among frequent searchers, precisely the users most valuable to our clients, 61% said searches now take up to 50% longer than before the DMA.<\/p> Forty-two percent of frequent travelers reported that flight and hotel searches had worsened significantly. More than 40% said they would actually pay to restore the functionality they had before March 2024.\u00a0<\/p> When users are willing to pay for something they previously received for free, regulation has failed catastrophically.<\/p> The European Centre for International Political Economy conducted a separate survey of 3,500 consumers across Central and Eastern Europe and found similar results.\u00a0<\/p> Eighty percent had never heard of the DMA, it solved problems they didn\u2019t know existed, yet 39% reported that routine online tasks had become more cumbersome since early 2024.\u00a0<\/p> As SEO professionals, we must confront this truth: Users preferred the integrated Google experience we spent years complaining about.<\/p> Before the DMA, searching for \u201chotels in Paris\u201d displayed an interactive map with photos, ratings, real-time availability, and prices \u2014 all accessible without leaving the search results page.<\/p> That integration has been dismantled because Google Search and Google Maps are designated as separate core platform services, and their seamless cooperation constitutes prohibited self-preferencing.\u00a0<\/p> Users must now click through to separate services, repeat their searches, and lose context. Regulators call this fair competition. Users call it a worse internet.<\/p> The business metrics support what consumers report feeling. Following the DMA\u2019s implementation, click-through rates on Google Hotel Ads decreased by 30% in affected European regions compared to unaffected markets. Direct bookings through Google Hotel Ads fell by 36%. This is all despite theoretically fairer visibility in search results.\u00a0<\/p> These are businesses losing revenue because the mechanism connecting searchers to services has been deliberately degraded.\u00a0<\/p> Meanwhile, Google\u2019s search monopoly remains entirely intact.\u00a0<\/p> The company still processes over 90% of European search queries. The difference is that now the search experience delivers measurably worse results for users and measurably worse outcomes for businesses paying for visibility.<\/p> The DMA requires Google to treat competing vertical search services (flight comparison sites, hotel booking engines, shopping aggregators) with the same prominence as its own offerings.\u00a0<\/p> In response, Google tested a version of its hotel search that removed maps, removed structured listings with photos and availability, and displayed only 10 blue links. Users hated it.\u00a0<\/p> Hotels saw a traffic crater. Google documented the catastrophic user satisfaction scores and presented them to the Commission as evidence that integration serves user needs, not just Google\u2019s interests.\u00a0<\/p> The Commission found itself in an impossible position: Force Google to maintain the worst experience in the name of fairness, or acknowledge that some integrations genuinely benefit users even when they advantage Google\u2019s products.<\/p> Google responded to preliminary findings of non-compliance by making incremental adjustments that preserve the substance of its advantage, while creating just enough ambiguity about whether it\u2019s following the rules.\u00a0<\/p> When the Commission objects to one implementation, Google proposes another that differs in form but not effect. This process can continue indefinitely because the underlying problem, Google\u2019s monopoly in search, remains untouched.\u00a0<\/p> For a company with annual revenues exceeding $300 billion, regulatory fines are simply a cost of doing business. The Commission fined Google \u20ac2.4 billion for shopping search abuses and breaking antitrust rules. The company paid and continued operating largely as before. It will do the same with DMA fines.\u00a0<\/p> The uncomfortable reality is that you can\u2019t regulate a monopoly into behaving competitively. You can only break the monopoly itself.<\/p> <\/p> Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.<\/p> <\/p><\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/div> <\/p> The European Commission must monitor 23 core platform services across seven gatekeepers, while each company releases updates continuously:<\/p> By the time the Commission identifies a potential violation, conducts workshops with stakeholders, issues preliminary findings, allows the company to respond, and publishes a final decision (a process taking 12-18 months), the underlying technology and business models have moved on.\u00a0<\/p> Google launched AI Overviews in Europe one week after receiving preliminary findings of non-compliance for self-preferencing in traditional search. The company essentially announced that, while regulators debate whether Google Flights should rank above Kayak, Google is moving to a fundamentally different search results page where AI-generated summaries replace links entirely.\u00a0<\/p> The DMA contemplated regulating 2024\u2019s search landscape. Google is already building 2027\u2019s.<\/p> While I\u2019m not a regulator, I have been doing SEO for 15 years. In my opinion, regulators should redouble efforts to address actual structural monopolies rather than impose rules on how platforms must operate.\u00a0<\/p> The DMA tries to regulate platform behavior while leaving monopoly power intact. This is like trying to stop water from flowing downhill by prescribing which route it must take. The water will find another path, and everyone gets wet in the process.<\/p> If Google\u2019s dominance in search truly stifles competition, perhaps the solution isn\u2019t to regulate how it displays results but to break its monopoly altogether. The United States has considered requiring Google to divest Chrome; such structural remedies might succeed where behavioral rules have failed.<\/p> If the concern is that Google leverages search dominance to advantage its advertising business, separate the two.\u00a0<\/p> If the worry is that controlling both the search algorithm and the content (YouTube, Google News, Google Shopping) creates irresolvable conflicts of interest, then require differentiation.\u00a0<\/p> These actions would be slower, more legally complex, and more politically difficult than passing the DMA. They would also actually work.<\/p> In short, regulators should focus on creating conditions for competition rather than micromanaging every product decision. That means enabling genuine data portability so users can switch services easily, taking their search history and preferences with them.\u00a0<\/p> This also means using traditional antitrust enforcement aggressively for the largest abuses, like Google systematically burying competitors on page four, exclusive deals that lock out rivals, and acquisitions designed to eliminate nascent threats.\u00a0<\/p> The DMA\u2019s first two years have demonstrated that ex-ante rules are no faster \u2014 investigations still take 12-18 months \u2014 and far less effective than traditional enforcement.\u00a0<\/p> The geopolitical consequences threaten to undermine European interests far beyond digital markets. In December 2025, the Trump administration threatened retaliation against the EU for what it characterized as discriminatory targeting of American technology companies. The Office of the United States Trade Representative explicitly named European companies, including Spotify, Siemens, SAP and DHL, as potential targets for new restrictions.\u00a0<\/p> From Washington\u2019s perspective, the DMA looks less like competition policy and more like industrial policy disguised as regulation.\u00a0<\/p> Whether that characterization is fair matters less than the political reality: Brussels finds itself caught between domestic pressure to demonstrate tough enforcement and external pressure that threatens broader trade relationships.<\/p> Dig deeper: Google outlines risks of exposing its search index, rankings, and live results<\/em><\/strong><\/p> See the complete picture<\/span> of your search visibility. <\/p> Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform. <\/p> <\/p><\/div> Start Free Trial<\/span> <\/p> Get started with<\/p> The DMA promised to enable the next generation of search-dependent businesses. It promised to stop Google from using its search monopoly to advantage its vertical products. It promised fairer competition for hotels, airlines, ecommerce sites, and the entire ecosystem of businesses that depend on organic search traffic.\u00a0<\/p> Two years in, Google\u2019s monopoly remains intact, user experience has measurably degraded, business metrics have worsened, and no meaningful new competition has emerged.\u00a0<\/p> For those of us who spent years documenting Google\u2019s abuses and advocating for intervention, this failure is spectacular.\u00a0<\/p> If regulators can\u2019t find ways to break up long-standing monopolies (now over two decades old for some platforms), what hope is there to address emerging challenges in AI search, voice search, or whatever comes next?\u00a0<\/p> Young companies have a right to compete in digital markets. Regulators must create conditions where genuine competition is possible, not regulate away the symptoms of monopoly while leaving its foundations untouched.<\/p> We were right about the problem. The DMA is simply the wrong solution.<\/p> <\/div> Contributing authors are invited to create content for Search Engine Land and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the search community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. Contributor was not asked to make any direct or indirect mentions of Semrush. The opinions they express are their own.<\/em> <\/p> Opinion#Digital #Markets #Act #promised #fairer #search #failing1773165401<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SEO professionals don\u2019t agree on much. But over the past decade, we\u2019ve come together around the conviction that Google has abused its dominant position, that it systematically favors its own products over better alternatives, and that something must be done to create fairer competition in search.\u00a0 In 2022, the European Union passed the Digital Markets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[7793,1475,2343,17089,358,155,17088,95],"class_list":["post-4682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-careers","tag-act","tag-digital","tag-failing","tag-fairer","tag-markets","tag-opinion","tag-promised","tag-search"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Semrush](\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2025\/11\/semrush-one.webp\" "\\"The")
<\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/p> What users actually experience<\/h2>
Why does it matter?\u00a0<\/h3>
The business impact: Worse metrics across the board<\/h2>
The enforcement problem: Fines don\u2019t work<\/h2>
The speed problem: Regulation can\u2019t keep pace<\/h2>
What should regulators do instead?<\/h2>
The geopolitical reality<\/h2>
<\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/p> The wrong solution to a real problem<\/h2>