WeBuildWednesdays #37 â What Does the Google Antitrust Case Mean for Your Business? Interesting news lately for those whoâve been following. Google has been told that the Department of Justice is investigating them under antitrust concerns. So, what weâre talking about today is what the Google antitrust case could mean for your business. What Google Antitrust Case Means for Business TheRead more
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 Googleâs revenue. Itâs 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.
Thatâs crazy to think about, considering that Google has a lesser percentage in China since itâs banned there (Baidu is Chinaâs 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 youâre interested at all in Google search. They release a lot of information to the public through this account, and again, thatâs Google Search Liaison. This tweet came out on June 6th and says: Â
âHave you ever done a search and gotten many listings all from the same site in the top results? Weâve 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 resultsâŚâ
âThis site diversity change means that you usually wonât 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 itâs especially relevant to do so for a particular searchâŚâ
Thereâs a little bit more to that. You can check out the full series of tweets if youâre interested.
The rest of it is not as important, but as far as what this could meanâespecially for local businessesâis that you could potentially get more clicks to your site than previously. Google is already responding to this antitrust case. They donât want to get hit with anything big from the Department of Justice, so theyâre 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, Iâm sure if you search, âbest marketing agencies in Naperville, Illinois,â youâll see Yelp probably within the first four results. Thatâs going to change. Yelp will no longer be the first four results. Youâll have a much better chance of ranking.
Obviously, itâs hard to compete with Yelp. They have a ton of authority. Thatâs always a difficult one and a lot of our local clients ask us about that. But if theyâre limited to two spots, this frees up some real estate, and weâve got some room to compete nowâwhich is great!
2) More Visible Credit
The other thing is the rich listings that show on the search engine results page. Oftentimes, youâll search for a knowledge panel, or something like that, to find the site in which the result pulls from. Google doesnât 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.

















