What, Me Worry? How Google’s Antitrust Case Affects Your Business

It’s rare these days to hear about bipartisan action of any kind but, apparently, nothing brings the parties together like fear of Big Tech. Reminiscent of the watershed case against Microsoft, attorneys general for 50 U.S. states and territories have announced and started antitrust investigations into Google. The states have joined a federal probe amid growing concerns about Google’s handling of consumer data, information flow and, ultimately, competition. But, what does this mean for your marketing efforts and — more concerningly — will you have to use Bing now? Let’s dig a little deeper.

Since its inception in 1998 (side note: if 1998 were a person, they’d be old enough to drink 🤯), Google has been the target of antitrust litigation. From inquiries into the Double Click tracking platform to the organic Google search results page, Google has been in the crosshairs nearly as long as it’s dominated the search engine landscape. While fines have been issued and certain Google features have been updated as a result of these lawsuits, Google in 2019 has shown no signs of losing its place at the top.

Barring some sort of super under-the-radar innovation, search engines will continue to provide the best answers to online queries for the foreseeable future. And who’s had the biggest impact on search engine efficiency? Let me google that for you. Google has created and refined the algorithms that nearly every other player in the search engine game has adopted. As a result, most search engines function similarly — at least on the back end — to Google, even as Google takes all the heat.

Bearing this in mind, you can put your business-focused concerns about Google to rest. As stated above, this isn’t the company’s first antitrust-related court battle, and even if Google were broken up, there’d still be plenty of lookalikes ready to connect consumers and businesses via search. Some unique Google features may change or disappear if investigators decide to take action, but the core functionality and standards for what decides a websites’ ranking will mostly remain the same. And hey, who knows what could rise from the ashes?

Regardless of which tech giant currently sits on the Iron Throne, here are some core search engine optimizations you can focus on to ensure your company shows up in search and traffic goes to your site: