Earlier this month, a ruling was finally released in the monumental antitrust case filed against Google by the US Department of Justice. The digital marketing world has pretty much revolved around Google’s products for some time now, so many in the industry are concerned about how significant the effects of this ruling may be.
In summary, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta determined that Google created and maintained a monopoly over the product markets for general search services and general search text ads. It largely did so by paying a number of device manufacturers to make sure Google was the default (and only) search engine on those devices.
It was also revealed that Google used its dominance in the paid ads market to artificially inflate prices with virtually zero repercussions. In determining that Google does have a monopoly over the search text ads market, the document states, “It is sufficient at this point to observe what is undisputed, which is that Google does not consider competitors’ pricing when it sets text ads prices. That is ‘something a firm without a monopoly would have been unable to do.’” Google was free to determine pricing based solely on their own profit goals, and advertisers and marketers had few other options.
These anti-competitive market practices didn’t just allow Google to take the lead through their own merit, they were deemed to be a concerted effort to stifle their competition. So what does all of this mean for the marketers and consumers who have been forced to rely on Google’s products?
What the Google antitrust ruling means for SEO
Any SEO can tell you that other search engines are usually minor considerations in most organic strategies. But now that Google may no longer dominate the web, will SEOs have to start optimizing for other algorithms? It’s possible, especially as privacy-friendly options like DuckDuckGo are gaining visibility. However, it’s not easy to change user habits overnight. While it’s unlikely another competitor will capture the market any time soon, this ruling may make room in the future for other search engines to address what many users feel is a lackluster state of search engine affairs.
A notable part of the ruling is that Google’s practices were deemed to “reduce incentive to invest and innovate in search.” Judge Mehta notes that Google is in fact “the industry’s highest quality search engine,” but as of late, many feel that the industry’s best isn’t really all that great. A German study seems to corroborate what many searchers feel– that SEO spam, AI-generated content, and ads make it harder to find what they’re looking for. All that to say, there is plenty of user loyalty on the table if another search engine can answer the call. If other search engines improve their algorithms and take the lead, how can digital marketers prepare to weather those changing trends?
Optimizing for alternative search engines
Currently, Bing is the second most popular search engine on the market, with 3.43% of total searches worldwide (Statista). That amounts to 1.3 billion unique visitors a month you could potentially reach! The good news is that if you’re practicing a person-first approach to SEO, you’re appealing to most search engines already. Google’s own E-E-A-T guidelines claim to prioritize content that’s created to benefit people over algorithms, and Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines echo a similar sentiment:
“Bing seeks rich, valuable, and engaging content created for users, not search engines. By creating clear, unique, high-quality, relevant, and easy-to-find content on your website, you will increase the probability of Bing indexing and showing your content in search results.”
Bing also suggests many of the same technical SEO best practices, such as:
- offering organized sitemaps
- implementing appropriate redirects where necessary
- using schema/structured data (or semantic markup, as Bing refers to it)
- considering user experience factors such as site speed and accessibility
As well, Bing even offers search analytics in their Webmaster Tools platform that rival Google Search Console.
Optimizing for DuckDuckGo and other search engines
Many other alternative search engines are also powered by Bing (at least in part), so following the above guidelines can improve your rankings on those sites as well. These include:
- DuckDuckGo
- Yahoo
- Ecosia
- AOL
- MSN
- Search.com
However, some of these search engines have their own rules to be aware of. DuckDuckGo is the most popular of these options and possibly the most idiosyncratic, so here’s what you need to know to show up in their SERPs.
Trying to rank on DuckDuckGo will impact your local SEO strategy the most, as their privacy-focused algorithm hardly collects any user location data. This means that “near me” searches are less likely to pull up relevant results (although they can approximate user location through IP data). To reach the right users, make sure you’re using appropriate local keywords on your site and following other best local practices like including your address in your footer. Like the Bing tips above, though, these best practices apply to pretty much all search engines. A final note on optimizing for DuckDuckGo: they use Apple Maps, so make sure you’ve claimed your business listing if you want to show up correctly in map searches.
Preparing for changes in the search market
Next up is a hearing to decide what changes and penalties to impose on September 6th. It will likely take time for those changes to take effect (whatever they may be) and Google’s lawyers have confirmed they plan to appeal the ruling. And even if the court upholds its verdict, there isn’t much they can do to immediately change existing user habits.
But changes are on the horizon. Growing interest in privacy-friendly products as well as growing frustrations in search quality and ad performance signal that the market is ready for something fresh. Ultimately, however organic and paid search change, the goal will remain the same– connecting people with the highest-quality content to meet their needs. No matter which search engine or ad platform you use, the evidence suggests that a people-first digital marketing strategy will keep a straight course through whatever waves in the market may come.
