On 17 June 2026, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) issued two new rules that require Google to be more transparent about how it ranks search results — including its AI-powered summaries — and to set up clearer ways for businesses to complain if they feel unfairly treated.

These rules stem from the CMA's decision in 2025 to give Google a status called strategic market status (SMS) in general search. This is the UK's legal tool for controlling companies that have "substantial and entrenched market power" in important digital markets. Once a company gets SMS status, regulators can impose binding rules on how it operates without first having to prove it broke competition law. That speeds things up considerably compared to traditional enforcement, which often requires lengthy investigations and legal cases.

The Two New Requirements

The first rule, the fair ranking conduct requirement, requires Google to rank search results based on objective criteria—meaning the same rules apply to all websites equally, with no hidden preferencing for Google's own services. Google must also explain how that ranking works, especially for AI-driven features. The second rule creates formal complaint channels so publishers and businesses can raise concerns about their treatment in search without having to trigger a full regulatory investigation.

Transparency for Publishers and AI Services

Beyond these two rules, the CMA is working on publisher-specific obligations that would require Google to give news outlets and content creators clear information about how their material is collected and used—including separate data showing how their content performs in AI features versus traditional search. This part of the regulation tackles a practical problem that has grown urgent with AI Overviews (Google's AI summaries of search results).

As AI Overviews absorb more of the "answer" space in search, publishers lose visibility into whether their content is being used, credited, or even seen. Separate performance data would let them see how their traffic and attribution differ between Google's web index and its AI features. Right now, that distinction is buried and opaque. Without that visibility, publishers cannot make informed decisions about whether to allow Google to index their material, what licensing deals to strike, or how much to invest in search optimization.

What "Fair Ranking" Actually Means

The fair ranking requirement sounds broad but is actually focused. It does not dictate which publishers Google must rank higher, nor does it require specific ranking outcomes. Instead, it requires that the criteria used to rank results be objective and non-discriminatory, and that Google explain how those criteria work on any given piece of content—including within AI summaries.

Self-preferencing in search—where a search engine ranks its own services higher—has been a concern globally. The European Commission took Google to court over exactly this in the Shopping case, first ruling against it in 2017 and upholding that decision through years of appeals. The CMA's approach under UK law is faster and more forward-looking: instead of litigating what Google did in the past, it sets a standard Google must meet going forward, with enforcement consequences if it fails.

AI Overviews create a compliance challenge that is new and harder to solve. Traditional blue-link search results have a relatively clear ranking structure; AI-generated summaries blend information from multiple sources and often do not show individual website links at all. Requiring Google to explain "how it ranks organic search results, including AI features" means Google must reveal ranking logic that is partly generated by artificial intelligence inference rather than deterministic code. Whether the CMA can actually audit that—or whether Google can meet a transparency standard for something not fully rule-based—will be the more difficult operational question ahead.

The CMA is now using its SMS powers to move faster on search issues than it could under older competition law. The regulations suggested alongside these requirements hint that more conduct rules are coming. For Google, managing increasingly specific regulatory obligations in the UK, EU, and US all at once creates a structural cost that smaller search competitors do not face. This approach signals a broader regulatory shift: rather than waiting years to prosecute a company for past misconduct, regulators are now setting forward-looking rules for companies with dominant positions in strategically important digital markets.