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Google has stated that changes made to comply with the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) have resulted in the largest reduction in search quality the company has reported to date. The comments point to specific product changes required under the regulation — including alterations to how certain rich results, business listings, and direct answers are displayed in EU search results — as the source of the quality decline.
The Digital Markets Act designates large technology platforms, including Google, as "gatekeepers" subject to strict rules around self-preferencing, data use, and interoperability. Among its requirements, the law restricts how dominant platforms can favor their own services — such as Google Flights, Google Hotels, or Google Business Profiles — in search results compared to competing services.
Google has argued in various regulatory proceedings that some of these requirements make search results less useful by limiting the kinds of direct, structured answers it can surface, forcing users to click through to third-party sites for information that could previously be shown immediately.
For SEO practitioners and publishers operating in EU markets, this kind of acknowledgment from Google is notable because it may signal further changes to how search results are structured, which features are available, and how traffic flows to third-party sites competing with Google's own products in categories like travel, local business, and shopping. Compliance-driven changes of this scale are also being watched closely by regulators in other jurisdictions considering similar platform legislation.
