Overview
- The Competition and Markets Authority on Wednesday told Google to rank organic search results by objective, non‑discriminatory criteria, and to apply those rules to AI‑generated Overviews while excluding paid adverts.
- The regulator converted Google’s voluntary UK Data Portability API into a legal requirement and gave Google three months to enable secure transfers of users’ search data to authorised third parties.
- Google has six months to put the fair‑ranking measures in place, must give advance notice of major ranking changes, and must create a formal complaints route that businesses can use to raise concerns.
- The CMA will require regular compliance reports and warned it may impose further measures if Google’s implementation is judged insufficient, while Google said it will cooperate and defended its current systems as fair and transparent.
- The orders use the CMA’s Strategic Market Status powers because Google handles more than 90% of UK search queries, and the changes follow earlier rules letting publishers opt out of feeding content into Google’s AI features.