Tim Wu, Michael Luca, and the Yelp Data Team [note – Wu was compensated by Yelp for his work] – “While Google is known primarily as a search engine, it has increasingly developed and promoted its own content as an alternative to results from other websites. By prominently displaying Google content in response to search queries, Google is able to leverage its dominance in search to gain customers for this content. This yields serious concerns if the internal content is inferior to organic search results. To investigate, we implement a randomized controlled trial in which we vary the search results that users are shown ­ comparing Google’s current policy of favorable treatment of Google content to results in which external content is displayed. We find that users are 45% more likely to engage with universal search results (i.e. prominently displayed map results on Google) when the results are organically determined. This suggests that by leveraging dominance in search to promote its internal content, Google is reducing social welfare ­ leaving consumers with lower quality results and worse matches.” Study: “Is Google degrading search? Consumer Harm from Universal Search [slideshare.net]

• And a follow up from the New York Times – Study Suggests That Google Has Its Thumb on Scale in Search by DINO GRANDONI; “Researchers presented 2,690 web users with two different versions of Google and found that the users preferred results that linked to rival sites.”