Google products enjoy a serious home turf advantage on the company’s search engine, said Jack Nicas in The Wall Street Journal. Ads for products sold by Google and its Alphabet-owned sister
companies snagged top billing in 91 percent of 25,000 recent searches analysed by search-ad-data firm SEMrush – from Chromebook laptops to Nest smoke detectors. The results highlight “a rarely
discussed” conflict of interest in the online ad industry. Google runs millions of auctions for search ads every minute, using a secret algorithm to determine placement and price. “Google said that when it competes for ads, other advertisers are charged as if it weren’t bidding.” However, because advertising slots are limited, “Google’s ads can prompt others to increase their bids to compete for the
remaining slots.”
