July 20, 2026 • Search Engine Journal
The European Commission has issued a binding decision requiring Google to share anonymized Search data with eligible competitors, according to Search Engine Journal. Under the Digital Markets Act, rival search engines — and AI chatbots that qualify as search engines — can request query and click data to build their own retrieval and ranking systems. Google's ranking algorithms and sensitive user information are excluded from what must be handed over.
Key takeaways
- The European Commission has ordered Google to share anonymized Search data under the Digital Markets Act, giving rival engines and search-enabled AI chatbots access to metrics they can use to develop their own retrieval and ranking systems.
- The decision sets out what must be shared — search queries and click data — and what is excluded: sensitive information and Google's own ranking algorithms.
- AI chatbots that meet the definition of a search engine are eligible recipients, which puts AI answer products in the same bucket as traditional engines.
What the decision does
The Digital Markets Act already obliged Google, as a designated gatekeeper, to give rival search providers access to certain data. This decision turns that general obligation into a specific, binding requirement: Google must provide anonymized Search data to eligible rivals on request, and the decision defines the categories of data in scope.
That distinction matters. A stated principle is something a company can interpret; an enumerated data set with a compliance deadline is something a regulator can measure.
What is in scope — and what is not
In scope are search queries and click data: the behavioural signals showing what people searched for and which results they chose. That is the raw material a competing engine needs in order to learn which pages actually satisfy which intents — and historically the hardest thing for a challenger to accumulate, because you need scale to get the data and the data to earn scale.
Out of scope are sensitive information and Google's ranking system itself. Competitors get inputs, not the machinery. The decision is aimed at lowering the data barrier to entry, not at transferring the algorithm.
AI chatbots count as eligible recipients
The detail with the longest tail is eligibility. AI chatbots that qualify as search engines can request the same data, which means the systems generating AI-powered answers may be trained on behavioural signals sourced from Google Search rather than from crawling alone.
Where that leads is not something the decision spells out, and it is worth resisting the temptation to forecast it. What can be said plainly: the data gap between Google and the products competing with it for answer traffic gets narrower in the European market, not wider.
What it means for small businesses
Nothing changes in your Search Console account this week. This is a European regulatory decision directed at Google, not a ranking update, and a London, Ontario business will see no immediate effect on its traffic.
The medium-term read is about surfaces. If rival engines and chatbots can build better retrieval systems on real query and click data, their answers improve — and answers people trust are answers people use. Brand visibility then becomes a question asked across several surfaces rather than one, which is a measurement problem before it is a search strategy problem.
The reassuring part is that the underlying signals do not change. Query and click data reward pages that clearly answer a real question and keep the person who clicked. Whichever engine is doing the retrieving, that is the same work — and the way to know whether it is paying off is measurement that connects visibility to leads rather than to rank positions alone.
The ONmetrics Take
Regulatory news like this rarely deserves a change to next month's plan, and this is no exception. Nobody should be rebuilding a content calendar because of a Commission decision in Brussels.
What it does justify is a small shift in what you watch. If you are only tracking Google rankings, you are measuring one surface in a market that regulators are actively trying to make less concentrated. Start recording where your brand shows up in AI answers alongside where it ranks — not because the answers matter more yet, but because you cannot detect a shift you never baselined.
Then keep doing the boring, durable thing: publish pages that answer the question a customer actually typed, and track which of them produce enquiries. That has survived every algorithm change so far, and it will survive a data-sharing mandate too.
Get a free digital marketing audit and we will baseline where your business appears across search and AI answers today.
Source
Original reporting: Search Engine Journal — "Google Must Share Anonymized Search Data With Rivals." https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-must-share-anonymized-search-data-with-rivals/582922/