Internet30.07.2024

Google is tagging South African search results

Google has assigned South African identifiers to organic search results in the form of the country’s flag and a “za South Africa” tag, promoting local e-commerce platforms on the search engine.

This follows a 2023 Competition Commission ruling, which concluded that Google’s dominance and business model platform distorted competition in South Africa.

South Africa imposed several constraints on the search giant to mitigate this distortion.

One of these was to “introduce a South African flag identifier and South African platform search filter to help consumers identify and support local platforms.”

These identifiers are now visible when searching for South African platforms on Google.

South African e-commerce platforms have a tag next to the site’s name, and local products listed in Google’s shopping carousel have a South African flag in the top right-hand corner.

Although there are many platforms without the “za South Africa” tag, those that have it include various e-commerce and accommodation platforms: takealot.com, bobshop.co.za, lekkeslaap.co.za, safarinow.com, wheretostay.co.za, and travelstart.co.za.

“Google Search is a de facto monopoly, accounting for over 90% of all general search across desktop, tablet and mobile devices,” the commission’s Online Intermediation Platforms Market Inquiry report found.

“Given its importance for customer acquisition, visibility on the Google search is critical and impacts on discoverability and website traffic.”

It also noted that Google’s search result ranking matters as consumers are likelier to click on the first results if they are most relevant to the query.

Furthermore, Google Search has evolved to provide more prominence to paid results — and Google’s own properties — relative to organic results for commercial search.

“This is reflected in the large and growing spend on Google paid results by platforms,” the commission stated.

“Whilst paid ads are on a cost-per-click auction basis and technically allows any platform to contest for a click, large platforms have considerable advantages, including budget size, contesting more popular commercial search terms given the higher returns on clicks, and the additional quality measures used in determining the outcome all favour established platforms.”

For example, when searching for “Online shopping South Africa,” three sponsored results appear before an organic result.

The first organic search result for SafariNow shows the za South Africa tag.
The shopping carousel, when searching for Takealot on Google, shows the South African flag in the corner of products featured on local platforms.

In addition to the tagging, the remedial actions listed in the report include the following:

  • Google must introduce a new platform sites unit or carousel to display smaller South African platforms relevant to the search on organic results. This must be free and in a content-rich display. For example, Google must show local travel platforms in a travel search in a new rich-content carousel.
  • To address its findings regarding the distortion caused by paid Google results, the company must provide R180 million in advertising credits for small platforms to use in customer acquisition, with free training to optimise advertising campaigns.
  • Google must also provide R150 Million in training, product support, and other measures for small and medium enterprises and black-owned online firms.
  • Google must stop “self-preferencing” its own products.

“In certain platform categories, such as shopping and travel, there is the additional distortion of Google providing services that compete with its customers for consumer attention,” the commission found.

“Google has strong incentives to capture this specialist search traffic and has the ability to do so given that the majority of traffic originates on Google search, where it designs the search page and algorithm.”

According to the report, Google can influence where and how its own shopping and travel units appear on the search page relative to competitors.

“Google’s Shopping Unit appears at the top of all search results, and its travel units at the top of organic results with a new paid hotel unit now appearing at the top of all search results,” it stated.

“The evidence demonstrates these units attract a large growing share of consumer traffic, and for Shopping this has been found to distort competition in the EU.”

The inquiry found that Google “self-preferencing” its own shopping and travel units on its search results page distorts competition.

“In the interests of both regulatory compliance for Google and oversight by the Commission, Google is required to implement in [South Africa] measures taken in Europe to comply with similar provisions in the Digital Markets Act to address self-preferencing.”

MyBroadband asked Google for comment on the rollout of its new tags, but it did not respond by publication.

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