By Mauro Orru
U.K. antitrust officials said Alphabet's Google should make its search rankings fairer and provide advance notice of any significant changes to its search services, giving the U.S. tech giant six months to act under the country's digital markets competition rules.
The Competition and Markets Authority issued so-called conduct requirements for Google to use objective and nondiscriminatory criteria to rank search results on its platform, including in summaries generated by artificial intelligence through its AI Overviews service.
Google must also increase transparency about how rankings work, give advance notice of changes, and bring in clear processes for businesses to raise concerns about how Google ranks results so it can address them effectively, the watchdog said.
"Search is a vital gateway for businesses in the U.K. to reach customers, and clearer, predictable and more transparent ranking systems could give them greater scope to expand and invest," Will Hayter, the CMA's executive director for digital markets, said. "These new measures will ensure search results are ranked fairly and objectively."
The CMA said it had issued the conduct requirements after receiving complaints that Google's current ranking practices weren't fair and that changes were made without sufficient notice, which businesses said harmed them and left them with no effective channels to raise concerns.
A Google spokesperson said the company's ranking systems were fair, transparent and showed the most relevant and highest quality results. "We are committed to protecting the integrity of our systems, and will work constructively with the CMA to ensure that we can uphold the high quality of Search for our users."
Aside from ranking requirements, the CMA issued a separate directive for Google to allow users to easily share their search data with rewards platforms, companies that offer personalized offers or discount codes and other third parties.
Google already has a so-called Data Portability Application Programming Interface to build applications that help users export their data from Google products, but the CMA said a conduct requirement would essentially make the voluntary process in place through the Data Portability API legally binding.
Google has three months to comply with the order that the CMA said would give U.K. users the same rights on data sharing as those in the European Union under the bloc's Digital Markets Act.
This is the second intervention from the CMA against Google in June. Earlier this month, the regulator said it would allow publishers to opt out of feeding their content to power AI features in Google's online searches.
Write to Mauro Orru at mauro.orru@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 17, 2026 07:26 ET (11:26 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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