Key Points
To comply with looming rules that ban tech giants from favoring their own services, Google has been testing new look search results for flights, trains, hotels, restaurants, and products in Europe..
The EUs Digital Markets Act is supposed to help smaller companies get more traffic from Google, but reviews service Yelp says that when it tested Googles design tweaks with consumers it had the opposite effectmaking people less likely to click through to Yelp or another Google competitor...
The results, which Yelp shared with European regulators in December and WIRED this month, put some numerical backing behind complaints from Google rivals in travel, shopping, and hospitality that its efforts to comply with the DMA are insufficientand potentially more harmful than the status quo..
Overall, Googles tests of various DMA-inspired designs show clicks to review and comparison websites are up, O'Donoghue saysat the cost of users losing shortcuts to Google tools and individual businesses like airlines and restaurants facing a drop in visits from Google search..
For searches like that or for other local businesses, as Google calls them, one new design features results from Google Maps data at the top of the page below the search bar but adds a new box widget lower down containing images from and links to reviews websites like Yelp...
