DESCRIPTION: Rival companies of search engine giant are taking action against the search engine for what they allege are unfair practices. Find out what this means to online marketers.

Google is obviously the biggest search engine and the most visited website in the world. For this reason, Boston SEO companies will obviously recommend that any website owner do everything possible to get a good ranking on this search engine, as this is where most of the web traffic is coming from.

While many would agree that Google is a useful partner in getting traffic to their website, three companies, notably Yelp, Expedia and Nextag are alleging that the search engine giant is seeking to secure profits for itself by deliberately taking actions that punish their competitors on its search engine. The three companies are stating that Google has abused their dominance of the internet search world and the competing sites, which offer information on travel, local business, as well as various consumer goods, were deliberately pushed down in search engine rankings so that Google could instead direct traffic to specialized sites that it owns.

More specifically, Expedia state that Google often will steer users to their own websites at the expense of their competitors. Nextag claims that Google deliberately disallows it from bidding on the most prominent ads that appear next to natural search results. Yelp is alleging that Google unfairly seeks to promote their own business listings service called Google Places, while pushing down rival sites that do the same thing.

So, what does this all mean for those interested in Boston internet marketing solutions? For the moment, not very much. The issue is expected to stir up some debate in the Capitol. Some people believe that Google should be neutral in its search engine results. Others, believe that the rankings of the search engine constitute an “opinion” made by the search engine and are thus protected under the First Amendment.

For internet marketers that wish to promote a website, things are not expected to change much anytime soon. You can still use a digital marketing agency to find innovative and efficient solutions for promoting your business website online. But remember that besides search engines, there are also plenty of other sources of traffic that you can use instead. For example, social media sites such as Facebook allow small business owners to create a fan page, or to advertise via their pay per click ads platform. There are also many other sites, such as online portals, or other sites that target various niches, which allow webmasters to advertise with them by buying ad space on their website. These are all excellent ways of getting traffic to your own site without being entirely reliant on search engines such as Google for it.

For more information about internet marketing news, trends and strategies visit inSegment.