Three price comparison websites, Foundem, ejustice.fr and Ciao! have accused Google's search engine of burying their ads at the bottom of websites because their products were in direct competition with Google.
"We follow the users and everything else will follow," Google's legal counsel told journalists today (24 February), arguing that the company itself does not decide where competitors' ads end up as this was the task of its algorhythm, called PageRank.
PageRank, according to the company's legal advisor, Julia Holtz, ranks websites according to their overall popularity on the Web.
"We are confident that our business operates in the interests of users and partners, as well as in line with European competition law," said Holtz, denying the websites' claims.
The search engine said it would be answering all three complaints separately as soon as possible, adding that the European Commission had simply asked for information and had not yet issued an objection to Google.
When the Ciao! website was bought by Microsoft in 2008, Google alleges that it began receiving complaints about its standard terms and conditions.
Ciao! initially took their case to Germany's competition authority, the Bundeskartellamt, but it has now been transferred to Brussels.
Be more 'relevant'
Holtz said if the websites wanted higher rankings "they should work on more relevant web pages".
She was referring to PageRank, which counts mentions of websites. The most-mentioned websites should end up higher in Google's ad listings.
Holtz also explained that there were more than 2,000 signals that determine rankings and that the company refused to say exactly how the algorhythm worked as doing so would open the floodgates to spamming.
The three websites also complained that there was no way to address their low rankings, which previously were much higher.
According to Holtz, the websites could use the search engine's webmaster tool, a way of addressing problems on the site, "to file a reinclusion request".
