If you do a search in Google Search for [inflation stocks], Google will show you a related searches feature with the title “stocks to buy now.” To savvy SEOs and searches, we know this is not Google recommending these stocks to buy but rather this is a related searches feature on the top of which stocks to buy based on content on the web.
But as you can imagine, this type of search feature can be dangerous for both the searcher and Google.
Here is a screenshot showing this:
It might appear that Google is recommending Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Apple, Microsoft and Alibaba. But while it appears that way to most searchers, technically that is not what Google is doing.
This was spotted by Blair MacGregor on Twitter who said “Ummm… Hey Google, couldn’t this be (at least loosely) construed as investment advice?” in which Danny Sullivan of Google responded that he will pass it along…
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: Google has changed it to “top value stocks” from “stocks to buy now”:
