SEO and AdWords: Staying on top of Google changes

Many experts in the industry weren't at all surprised to see Google hit with a whopping £2.1 billion fine earlier this week. The search engine giant have long been accused by the European Commission of abusing it's power by promoting its own shopping comparison service at the top of search results. It's actually the largest fine ever given out by the European Commission, they're certainly not messing around... 

The issue is mainly based around the Google Shopping results, whereby businesses pay Google to appear at the top of search results in an image box with the price. By making it anticompetitive and favouring their own adverts, the claim is that Google are monopolising search. If Google doesn't change things in 90 days, they'll face fines of up to 5% of it's daily global turnover every single day, that amounts to a staggering $14m a day!

Google is undoubtedly going to have to make significant changes, perhaps showing competitor links more prominently in search results alongside their own. Or perhaps as Search Engine Land suggest, they may even pull their Shopping channel out of Europe, similar to in 2014 when they shut down Google News in Spain following legislation that meant they would have to pay media outlets.  At this stage, online marketers aren't sure exactly what to expect and how soon to expect any changes to materialise.

As a digital marketing agency, it's our job to help promote businesses online and stay on top of the latest trends and developments in the online world. Thousands of businesses in the UK use Google AdWords to reach people online, but simply don't have the time to react and respond to changes. We work hard for our clients to stay on the coat tails of all of that's going on in the fast paced world of SEO and Pay-per-click advertising, getting businesses maximum value for their marketing budget.

What we do know for certain is that is sets a worrying precedent for Google. We'll be monitoring every change along the way and tweaking our marketing strategies accordingly for our clients.

To find out more about the Google fine, the BBC have written a good analysis piece.