Google investigated in Texas over search engine ranking claims

Google confirmed in a blog post that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is conducting an antitrust review of the company and its search engine.

"We’re confident that Google operates in the best interests of our users," said Google deputy general counsel Don Harrison in the post. "Occasionally, we’re asked about the 'fairness' of our search engine – why do some websites get higher rankings than others?"

"The important thing to remember is that we built Google to provide the most useful, relevant search results and ads for users. In other words, our focus is on users, not websites," he said. "Given that not every website can be at the top of the results, or even appear on the first page of our results, it’s unsurprising that some less relevant, lower quality websites will be unhappy with their ranking."

"We work hard to explain our approach to search and how our ranking works, and we also listen carefully to people’s concerns," said Harrison. "We’re looking forward to working cooperatively with the Texas Attorney General’s office, and we strongly believe our business practices reflect our commitment to build great products for the benefit of users everywhere."

The Texas Attorney General has asked about Google's behaviour in relation to three companies. One of them, Foundem, is a UK price comparison website that also features in a complaint that was made to the European Commission.

In February of this year Foundem complained to the Commission, which enforces EU competition law, that Google discriminated against it by placing it low down in search rankings because it competed with Google.

Foundem said that Google operates 'penalty filters' against competing companies.

"Whereas these penalties used to be reserved for spam, or sites caught attempting to cheat Google’s algorithms, they are now increasingly targeted at perfectly legitimate vertical search and directory services," it said in a statement on its website at the time. "It may not be coincidence that, collectively, these services present a nascent competitive threat to Google’s share of online advertising revenues."

Foundem is one of the three companies that the Texas Attorney General has inquired about, Google said.

"They claim that Google’s algorithms demote their site because they are a direct competitor to our search engine," said Harrison. "The reality is that we don’t discriminate against competitors. Indeed, companies like Amazon, Shopping.com and Expedia typically rank very high in our results because of the quality of the service they offer users."

The issue of rankings in Google searches is vital for many companies, since Google is responsible for over 90% of the world's internet searches.

The other two companies about whose claims the Texas Attorney General has inquired are SourceTool and its parent TradeComet, and myTriggers. Google said that both companies were being represented by lawyers who had done antitrust work for Google search engine rival Microsoft.