Google overhauls EEA search results to comply with DMA

Google has started rolling out a new search results layout across the European Economic Area to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act, and it is warning that the change lowers the quality of its own service. From 8 September 2026, commercial searches for hotels, flights, long-distance trains and buses, and products can show a dedicated aggregator unit for comparison services alongside a supplier unit for direct businesses, and Google has pulled some rich features such as real-time prices from the carousels beneath. For multi-location brands operating across Europe, the results page they compete on has been redrawn.

What happened

The redesign follows the European Commission’s 23 July 2026 penalties against Google under the Digital Markets Act, which came as two decisions totalling 890 million euro: 460 million euro for giving preferential treatment to Google’s own services in search results, and 430 million euro over restrictions on how developers steer users off Google Play. The Commission ordered Google to bring the practices to an end, and reporting put the compliance window at 60 days.

In documentation published on 8 September, Google Search Central describes two new EEA-only result types: an aggregator unit and a supplier unit. The aggregator unit surfaces vertical search services for queries about hotels, flights, long-distance trains or buses, and products. Only one aggregator shows at a time, with the top-ranked provider expanded by default and other approved providers reachable from a dropdown, while the separate supplier unit lists direct providers. Google also states that travel, local and shopping queries in the EEA may show carousels featuring price, rating and images drawn from relevant websites, and reporting indicates that real-time pricing has been removed from the hotel and flight carousels that previously displayed it.

Nick Fox, Google’s senior vice-president for knowledge and information, said the changes are needed to comply with the DMA but degrade the experience for Europeans, favouring online intermediaries over local businesses and removing features people rely on. Google described the overhaul to Reuters as the largest reduction in the quality of its search service in its 29-year history, and said earlier DMA changes had already cut free, direct booking traffic to European businesses by 30 percent.

Why it matters

Self-preferencing rules decide where results appear, and the EEA layout changes that for whole categories at once. When an aggregator unit sits above the businesses themselves, a hotel group, an airline or a retailer can find a comparison service standing between its brand and the searcher on queries where a direct result used to come first. Removing real-time prices from carousels takes away a feature that sent qualified demand straight to the source. And because the rules apply only inside the EEA, brands that operate across European markets now face two different results pages, and two different playbooks, for the same query.

What this means for multi-location brands

For a central marketing team, this is a data and governance question before it is a creative one. When Google routes more European traffic through aggregators, the value of holding accurate, complete information on every location goes up. A brand appears in the supplier unit by being a direct provider that serves users in the EEA, something Google can read from what it already crawls, but the data a brand publishes is what decides how well it shows there, and the richer carousels that remain carry their own structured-data requirements. The practical first step is an audit of how the estate now appears in EEA results, market by market: the same query can render differently in Stockholm and in London, so a single national spot check no longer describes the picture.

From there the work is to keep location data consistent across Google and the other maps and search surfaces, so a brand stays present in the results that are left, and to invest in the channels it controls when Google sends more clicks to comparison sites. Getting location listings right at scale is the foundation, and owning the direct path with a well-run store locator gives searchers a route back to the brand that an aggregator cannot intercept.

“The aggregator unit is a multi-provider feature designed for Vertical Search Services (VSSs), including Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), Comparison Shopping Services, metasearch engines, and directories.”

Google Search Central documentation

The bottom line

The EEA search page is no longer a variation on the global one. It is a separate surface with its own rules, and Google has said plainly that it expects the page to serve users less well. That makes direct visibility scarcer, and more valuable, in exactly the markets the DMA set out to open up. For multi-location brands the response is not to wait for the layout to settle, but to manage the European results page as the distinct, aggregator-heavy surface it has become, and to keep the location data and owned channels that decide who still shows up in good shape.