Yesterday, the ACCC called for submissions regarding the level of competition in the market for search engine services, raising the question: How do search engines influence your choice of businesses when browsing online?

RMIT School of Engineering Mark Gregory joined Julie-anne Sprague to provide insights on the inner workings of search engines. 

“The ACCC is trying to navigate the current digital world, but we need to remember these are not Australian companies, these are international companies,” Mr Gregory said.

“The method that Google uses has fundamentally changed. From being a simple search engine to this current format where we have the top ten items, three or four of those will be paid responses and then the others will be skewed based upon the search engine providers algorithm. There’s a lot of concern around algorithms and how they skew information.”

Press PLAY to find out more about search engines 

Image: Canva