Tech Tok: Big Tech and Capitol Hill.

Their past few weeks together have been eventful.

Here’s two big reasons it matters to marketers.

With it being a Presidential election year, you might expect I’d be focusing on Facebook. That is certainly important to note. We have noticed their flagging paid ads as “political” or “social issues” in nature to be much more prevalent. Make sure you have a partner that can be quick with a plan to divert those dollars into other tactics, or find ways to address any creative concerns that might be driving the flags.

But in this blog post, I’d rather discuss what Google was grilled on during their virtual visit to Capitol Hill. As it pertains to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), there are two trends that we are seeing increase in Google search results:

1. Google pulls content from sites into the search results page so that the searcher never needs to click through to the source website in many cases.

2. Google is pushing its own products on the search results page sometimes taking up 50% of the page, which again diminishes the likelihood of the searcher clicking through to the source site.

To quote our VP of Technology, Art Williams:

“It seems clear that Google no longer sees itself as a ‘search engine’ but more of an ‘answer engine’. It's not clear, however, what content Google should be allowed to take from source websites and show as its own versus simply displaying results and letting the source material take precedence.”

This ultimate question was posed to Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, during the recent antitrust hearing, “Is Google stealing from its customers?”

Tell us what you think below.