Google Ads for European Advertisers: Search After the DMA

Google has made more than twenty modifications to its search results in Europe to comply with the Digital Markets Act, and the evidence on who benefited points in two directions at once. For any team running European ecommerce marketing in travel or retail, the stakes are direct. A peer-reviewed economic study concludes the redesign reallocated attention toward smaller market participants and increased contestability. Industry survey data reports that 61% of frequent searchers say searches take around 50% longer, and Google itself says airlines and hotels have seen free direct booking clicks fall by as much as 30%. Working out which of those describes your business is the most consequential question in European digital marketing right now.

A capability page from Digital, Ecommerce & Performance Marketing in Europe. Read alongside performance marketing under opt-in consent, since Consent Mode and the DMA are formally linked. Last reviewed August 2026.

1. What the DMA actually changed in Google Search

The DMA prohibits designated gatekeepers from self-preferencing their own services. For Google Search in Europe that produced a specific and unusual set of changes: features were added to promote competitors, and features were removed from Google’s own results.

Source: Google’s own DMA compliance update, which describes more than 20 modifications to Google Search including dedicated units and formats to boost the prominence of comparison sites for free in flights, hotels and shopping, alongside removal of features showing flight information and reduced functionality for some clickable maps. Note that Google is an interested party in this dispute and its framing should be read accordingly.

This is the only major market where a regulator has required a search engine to make its results less useful in order to make them less self-preferencing. Whether that trade was worth it is exactly what the evidence disputes.

2. Three studies, three conclusions

The published evidence does not agree, and the disagreement is not merely a matter of emphasis.

Sources: academic working paper on the DMA-mandated SERP redesign using UK traffic as a control group, acknowledging Spanish state research funding; Nextrade Group and ECIPE findings as reported in 2026 commentary; Google’s published DMA compliance statements. Read the third column. Google is arguing against rules that constrain it, and think tank research in this area is frequently industry-funded. The academic paper has the cleanest incentive structure of the three but a narrower scope — principally air travel.

3. How to reconcile them

The three findings are less contradictory than they first appear, and the resolution matters commercially.

The academic study finds attention reallocated toward smaller market participants. Critics note that the changes elevated online travel agencies and comparison sites, and argue this effectively transferred market power from Google to a handful of large aggregators rather than creating a genuinely open market. Both can be true if the beneficiaries were intermediaries smaller than Google but larger than the suppliers they intermediate.

This reconciliation is my interpretation, not a published finding. It is offered because the alternative — treating one study as correct and dismissing the others — requires ignoring evidence that is internally consistent. Test it against your own traffic data rather than accepting it.

4. Which side of the redistribution are you on?

This is the practical question, and it has a straightforward test.

Assessment based on the documented direction of the changes — dedicated free units for comparison sites, removal of direct supplier-facing features, and Google’s reported figures on direct booking declines. Individual effects vary by category and market; verify against your own analytics rather than assuming.

The uncomfortable read for suppliers is that regulation intended to reduce platform dependency may have increased intermediary dependency. A hotel that previously received a free direct booking click from Google may now receive a booking through an aggregator that charges commission for it. The traffic did not disappear; it acquired a toll.

5. What this means for paid search specifically

Most DMA commentary addresses organic layout. The paid implications are less discussed and more immediate for a European performance marketing team, and they are where European digital marketing budgets quietly move without anyone deciding to move them.

Operational judgement based on the documented organic changes. The third row carries a caveat: rising branded search cost is only worth paying if it is incremental, which requires the holdout test described in the measurement analysis.

The first row is the one that quietly reallocates budget. If a supplier lost free direct clicks and replaced them with paid clicks, the paid channel now looks like it is performing while the business is simply paying for traffic it used to receive without charge. That shows up as stable revenue and rising cost of acquisition, and it is easy to misdiagnose as auction inflation.

6. Consent Mode and the DMA are linked

This is a European peculiarity worth stating explicitly because it surprises people. Google ties Consent Mode to its EU User Consent Policy and to obligations flowing from both the GDPR and the Digital Markets Act.

In practical terms, that means a competition instrument and a privacy instrument now jointly govern how a European advertiser configures measurement. There is no equivalent arrangement in any other market, and it is one reason European ecommerce marketing carries administrative overhead that identical activity in the US does not.

Elsewhere, consent configuration is a privacy question. In Europe it is a privacy question and a competition question, answered in the same tag.

7. The February 2026 test and what may follow

Reuters reported on 25 February 2026 that Google was preparing to test giving vertical search services top billing in European results for hotels, flights and restaurants, with suppliers holding real-time feed data appearing either above or below the list of vertical search engines. The rollout was described as beginning with lodging, with flights and other categories to follow.

Two caveats belong alongside that. Search Engine Roundtable noted the following day that similar changes had already been observable for roughly two years, so the novelty is contested. And the context is enforcement pressure: reports in December 2025 suggested Google was expected to face a formal EU fine in 2026 for insufficient compliance on vertical search.

Sources: Reuters reporting of 25 February 2026 as cited in trade coverage; Search Engine Roundtable commentary of 26 February 2026; European Commission COM(2026) 247 final of 21 May 2026; Commission guidance to Google on AI interoperability and Search data sharing, July 2026. The Commission declined to comment on the February test when contacted.

The planning implication is that European search layout is not a settled state to optimise against. It is an ongoing negotiation, and any baseline you establish should carry a date.

8. The strategic response: branded and direct demand

Across the commentary, the recommended response converges regardless of which reading of the evidence you accept: reduce dependency on layouts you do not control.

Based on published guidance recommending that businesses review traffic from direct search demand, aggregator pathways, map-driven discovery and branded queries; prepare for continued layout changes in hotel, flight and related commercial results; and invest in direct audience strategies, newsletter retention, branded search growth and content with strong authority signals.

The first row is where European digital marketing teams should start, and most cannot currently answer it. If you do not know what share of your traffic arrives via aggregator versus direct organic versus branded query, you cannot tell whether a layout change has already cost you money.

9. What this page does not cover

Scope statement. Note particularly the first row: nearly every published source on the DMA has a commercial position, and this page attempts to describe effects rather than adjudicate the policy.

10. The 90-day plan

Indicative sequencing. Pathway segmentation comes first because without it you cannot distinguish a DMA layout effect from ordinary seasonality or competitive movement.

11. Mistakes to avoid

Recurring errors in responding to European search layout change; illustrative.

12. What changes next

Enforcement is escalating. Reports in December 2025 pointed to an expected formal EU fine in 2026 over vertical search compliance, and the Commission published DMA review documentation in May 2026 under the Article 53 requirement to review the legislation.

Search data sharing is now a live mechanism. In July 2026 the Commission set out how Google should handle sharing Search data with third parties, including an anonymisation methodology and a pricing formula. Over time that could give competitors access to signal previously unavailable, which is a structural change to the European search market with no analogue elsewhere.

Simplification pressure runs the other way. The DSA and DMA have both been named as possible targets in the Commission’s digital fitness check, so the direction of travel is not uniformly toward more intervention.

Key Takeaways

• Google has made 20+ DMA-driven changes to European search, adding free prominence for comparison sites and removing some of its own features.
• The evidence genuinely conflicts. An academic study finds increased contestability; industry surveys report longer searches; Google reports direct booking clicks down as much as 30%.
• Check the interest position of every source, including Google’s, before accepting any figure.
• The likely reconciliation: traffic moved to aggregators, not to suppliers. Contestability at one layer can mean dependency at the next.
• Watch for free organic clicks quietly becoming paid clicks. That looks like healthy paid performance and rising acquisition cost.
• Consent Mode is tied to the DMA as well as the GDPR — a linkage that exists nowhere else.
• Segment traffic by pathway first. Without it you cannot tell a layout effect from seasonality.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

The DMA is the clearest example of something that exists only in Europe: a regulator reshaping the interface through which most commercial demand is discovered. For advertisers that produces an unusual planning problem, because the layout you optimise against this quarter is the outcome of a negotiation still in progress.

The evidence about who benefited will stay contested, partly because almost everyone publishing on it has a position. For anyone running European ecommerce marketing against these layouts, what is not contested is the direction: intermediaries gained prominence, suppliers lost some direct paths, and the difference between those two categories decides whether the DMA was good news for you. Segment your traffic by pathway, find out which side you are on, and then do the durable thing regardless — build the demand that arrives with your name on it, because that is the only traffic no layout change can reassign.