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ARTICLE · 23 JANUARY 2018

Google Extends Commitments With The FTC Over Crawling Of Third-Party Content For Use In Own "Vertical" Sites

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Moreover, this announcement does not address the unwanted crawling or spidering of websites by third parties other than Google.

United StatesMedia, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment

In a blog post last month, Google announced that it would extend certain commitments it made to the FTC in 2012 that were set to expire relating to, among other things, the scraping of third-party content for use on certain Google "vertical search" properties such as Google Shopping. The announcement came days before the commitments were set to expire on December 27th and months after Yelp had claimed that Google was not living up to its promises by allegedly scraping Yelp local business photos for use in certain Google results (e.g., local business listings).

In 2012, the FTC investigated allegations that Google scraped content, such as user reviews and star ratings, from competing websites to improve its own "vertical" offerings, such as Google Local and Google Shopping. Unlike "horizontal" search which scours the entire web for results, "vertical" searches are more focused – such as News, Images, Shopping, Travel, or in the case of Yelp, local businesses.

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