Could Google down-rank publishers who decline to use its new Privacy Sandbox online advertising system, which is scheduled to come online in early 2025?
So far the search giant has not offered any assurance that declining to use Sandbox, the Google-controlled system which will replace publisher cookies on Chrome, won’t impact search rankings.
Google’s recent core update downgraded the visibility on search of most news brands, often by double-digit percentages. Google also saw a 12% lift in UK ad revenues last year, according to The Advertising Association/Warc, while revenues going to online news brands fell 5.8%.
The search giant is currently in a six-month-long standoff with the UK Competition & Markets Authority over the issue of whether Google will tie search rank to Sandbox. The CMA asked Google last year to confirm that Sandbox will not be used as a ranking signal in its search algorithm but Google has thus far not answered.
“We are awaiting Google’s response on this point,” the CMA wrote in its most recent report on whether Sandbox will create a new online ad monopoly.
“It is important that the concerns are resolved, either through design changes, assurances from Google about action it will take or refrain from, or other evidence which resolves our concerns,” the CMA said.
Google told Press Gazette it was not coordinating the development of Sandbox with its search team. But it did not outright say that sites won’t be ranked based on whether they use Sandbox.
“The Privacy Sandbox team has not coordinated or requested from the Search organisation that they use page ranking as an incentive for websites to adopt the Topics API, the Protected Audiences API or the Attribution Reporting API,” a spokesperson told Press Gazette. Those APIs — application programming interfaces — are three of 16 or more that make up the Sandbox system.
The CMA has managed to extract a promise from Google that one of its APIs won’t be used as a rank signal: The Topics API. Topics allows readers to be targeted anonymously based on their browsing history.
“Google has confirmed to us that Google Search will not use a site’s decision to opt-out of the Topics API as a ranking signal,” the CMA said. “We consider that Google’s assurance that a site’s decision to support (or not to support) the Topics API will not influence its Google Search ranking should also extend to the other Privacy Sandbox tools.”
Google has a history of down-ranking websites that don’t use its products.
In 2015, Google launched Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), a product that allowed publishers to serve simpler web pages with advertising on them, for mobile devices. Google then ranked sites that used AMP more highly in search results, because those pages launched faster. But publishers became unhappy because ad revenues on AMP were lower than what they had been earning on the page format that AMP replaced.
“This is a valid concern,” said Justin Wohl, chief revenue officer at Snopes.com. “When Google launched AMP, accelerated mobile pages, adoption correlated to improved search ranking. Publishers who made the product switch to AMP ended up net-negative though, including Salon.com [where Wohl used to work], as the monetisation potential was lesser on AMP than on standard mobile web. The increase in search traffic pageviews did not equal more total revenue for publishers, leading many to abandon AMP.”
James Rosewell, cofounder of Movement for an Open Web, an industry lobby group that is critical of Google’s dominance of online advertising, said the mere delay in Google’s answer was suspicious. “It [is] incredible that Google has spent so long not clarifying their position on this. They could have issued a statement … The fact they haven’t, to me, indicates that the governance here is screwy internally within Google,” he said.
Jamie MacEwan, senior media analyst at Enders Analysis, agreed: “It does look odd on the surface that Google would take this long to reassure the CMA on down-ranking.” But, he said, that could be because Google doesn’t want to close down its options on the way it rates the quality of a website — and those factors often have nothing to do with advertising. “Since some of the APIs cover user protections like fighting spam and fraud, Google might be concerned that, should Sandbox be the sole alternative to cookies in some cases, giving up down-ranking powers could be a problem down the line,” he said.
Scott Messer, founder of Messer Media, a publishing consultant who specialises in digital monetisation, also said Google may be hedging its bets. “We do know that there has been an interplay between tech and rankings, particularly when AMP was introduced,” he said. “Google seems to be reserving their options here when it comes to Privacy Sandbox as a whole. Again, Google Search cannot outright demand that every publisher enable Privacy Sandbox. Instead, they could use a familiar tactic and say, ‘we prefer to recommend privacy-preserving websites to our visitors.’”
The IAB UK and the Association of Online Publishers both count Google among their membership and declined to comment publicly. But sources told Press Gazette they are monitoring the situation and retaining their faith — for now — that Google will take feedback from the industry seriously before the Sandbox launch.
Damon Reeve, the CEO of Ozone Project, an online ad marketplace joint owned by The Guardian, News UK,The Telegraph and Reach, said many publishers have bigger fish to fry when it comes to Google. “I think it’s unlikely that Google would penalise publishers in search rankings if they are not leaning in to [Privacy Sandbox],” he said. “Publishers are definitely feeling the impact of search algorithm changes that Google rolled out last [month].”
Publishers are more concerned about changes to Google News and Google Discovery, where Google is picking winners and losers based on its executives’ perception of what is quality and what is not, according to email newsletter The Rebooting.
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