The European Commission has opened an antitrust investigation against Google for claims of unfair practice on search engine results. Price comparison sites like Foundem and Ciao have both submitted claims against Google for penalizing them on their search engine results, according to the Telegraph.
The claims came to be when Foundem said that Google lifted the search penalty in December 2009, and their site traffic increased by 10,000 percent overnight. Both Foundem and Ciao are price comparision websites, where both are experiencing the same penalizing problem by Google.
“Google has always used various penalty filters to remove certain sites entirely from its search results or place them so far down the rankings that they will never be found,” said Foundem last August.
Foundem and Ciao believe Google penalized them, like they do for websites that spam or try to beat Google’s algorithm. This results in having their link pushed further down or on the next page of search results.
Google claims that since Ciao was purchased by Microsoft in 2008, they have complained numerous times about foul play, after having a great Adsense relationship with them. Google believes that the complaints are being filtered through Ciao from Microsoft.
Thanks to Shayla for the news tip!
59 Comments - Add comment