To comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Google made significant changes to Google Search, satisfying many stakeholders.
However, some intermediary sites demand further changes that could harm user experience.
To assess the impact, Google tested removing hotel features from Searches in Europe.
Findings:
– Users were less satisfied, took longer to find hotels, and often gave up.Traffic to hotels dropped significantly (over 10%), affecting hundreds of thousands of European hotels.
– Traffic to intermediaries remained flat.
– Due to these negative effects, Google has ended the test.
The changes they already made have shifted traffic from hotels to intermediaries, raising costs for consumers. Removing these features entirely would harm both users and businesses.
