Google has recently admitted that they are providing a bad user experience to European users, with European users currently seeing content in web search that directs them to blocked pages because of GDPR.
What is GDPR?
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union and the European Economic Area. GDPR has recently replaced the Data Protection Directive 95/46/ec and it set to reshape the way that data is handled across every sector, from healthcare to banking, with the ultimate intention being to provide people with more control over how their personal data is handled.
What is the problem?
It has been estimated that one third of US news sites are blocking EU web users because they do not want to comply with GDPR, and this is quickly becoming an issue for many European users using Google search. Websites that are blocking EU users are showing within the search results, however when clicked upon users are denied access. This is happening because Google does not recognise that EU users are being blocked from accessing the websites because Google crawls US based websites from the US and therefore believes the content is available to all users.
What are Google doing?
Google is currently looking for a solution to this problem however as this is an incredibly complicated problem we are not sure what Google will do in order to improve user experience. Google could possibly be working on a way to ensure that searchers from Europe do not see inaccessible content in the search results, but could also be consider other solutions.
Here to help
If you have any questions regarding this or anything else related to GDPR and the web, do not hesitate to contact our professional and friendly team today who are always happy to help: https://www.rsdigital.co.uk/contact-us/
