New Semrush study shows Google products dominate Google ad space

The advertising data company studied 25,000 pages, which 91% of were products from Google’s parent firm, Alphabet.

To find this they examined 1,000 pages for 25 different searches. Examples of the searches are laptop, speakers and watches.

Since the release of the study, a Google spokesperson has revealed the company has strict regulations regarding buying ad space.

He said the policies were “consciously and carefully designed” in order to avoid interference with ad pricing.

“All our bids are excluded from the auction when determining the price paid by other advertisers and we have strict rules and processes – set to tougher levels than our customers – to govern the use of our own ads products,”

It was announced by The Wall Street Journal that 100% of the top results for the search “laptop” were for Google’s Chromebook.

Furthermore, only 20 of the results for “watches” were not links selling, Alphabet owned, Android smartwatches.

It seems that the number of adverts for Alphabet products has decreased as a result of the publishing of the study, leading to other brands being the top results.

Last year in July, Google denied accusations, by the European Commission, of limiting competition in the market.

A senior analyst from IHS, Daniel Knapp, said “We think when we look at the screen that Google is placing its ads above others but advertising doesn’t work in that way,”

“It may be that Google is willing to pay more than others or that it has better targeting data for identifying users. The method of the experiment may also be flawed.”

He went on to talk about how the ads are controlled by algorithms.

“We live in an algorithmic world. How are these algorithms making decisions on our behalf and how is that distorting markets and society in general?” he said.

“This is an example of a much bigger underlying issue.”