diberry - 3:48 pm on Oct 15, 2012 (gmt 0)

You don't need to decode anything from a regulatory standpoint, that is largely a red herring entertained on message boards. The only thing a regulatory body has to concern itself with is the result of an entities action. Does this behavior harm consumer choice? (yes) or (no).

Right, but I would have thought they'd need to understand which ranking changes are from the algo and which are manual to determine such issues as whether Google is manually penalizing sites who irritate them, such as Yelp alleges. Because if Google is doing that, then that's definitely harming consumer choice in favor of Google's own agenda. But if they can't determine that Google manually screwed Yelp over, then there is no consumer choice issue. Am i misunderstanding something?

[edited by: diberry at 4:27 pm (utc) on Oct 15, 2012]