Use this page to review product changes that can favour a gatekeeper's own services or products in ranking, indexing, crawling, search results, marketplace display, app-store placement, social feeds, video surfaces, or virtual-assistant answers.
The examples are grounded in DMA Article 6(5), Article 2 definitions of ranking and search results, recital examples of preferential treatment, and the Article 11 compliance-report template.
Structured answer sets in this page tree.
Cited legal and guidance references.
DMA Article 6(5) is not a general ban on showing a gatekeeper's own product. It is a rule for designated gatekeepers: in ranking and related indexing and crawling, the gatekeeper must not treat its own services or products more favourably than similar third-party services or products, and the ranking conditions must be transparent, fair, and non-discriminatory. A useful compliance review therefore starts with the product surface, identifies the comparable third-party offering, and tests whether legal, commercial, technical, or interface choices give the gatekeeper's own offering a better position or equivalent advantage. Timings in this page are source-linked; verify current legal source language before implementation decisions.
Scope the review to a designated gatekeeper, a core platform service listed in the designation decision, and a surface where goods, services, apps, videos, marketplace offers, social posts, search results, or assistant responses receive relative prominence.
The DMA definition of ranking is broad. It covers relative prominence in online intermediation services, online social networking services, video-sharing platform services, virtual assistants, and relevance in online search results, regardless of the technical presentation method and even where only one result is communicated.
Use these examples as review patterns, not as a substitute for checking the exact designated core platform service and release facts. Each example should be tested against whether the gatekeeper's own product receives a better position or equivalent advantage than a similar third-party product.
A compliant implementation should be able to explain the ranking condition, apply it consistently to similar own and third-party offerings, and preserve product evidence showing that the rule was followed before and after release.
The evidence file should let a reviewer reconstruct the user journey, the comparison group, and the reason each own or third-party result received its position. Keep pre-release and post-release evidence together because small interface, policy, or algorithm changes can create a self-preferencing issue.
Evidence should be specific to the ranking surface. A generic competition-policy memo is not enough if the product change affected crawling priority, index inclusion, feature eligibility, result grouping, default sort order, result-card format, ratings treatment, or a voice-assistant handoff.
Article 11 connects product evidence to the gatekeeper's formal compliance reporting. Within 6 months after designation, the gatekeeper must provide the Commission with a detailed and transparent report on measures implemented to ensure compliance with Articles 5, 6, and 7, and must publish and provide a non-confidential summary. The report and summary must be updated at least annually.
For self-preferencing examples, do not wait until annual reporting to assemble evidence. Every release that changes ranking, indexing, crawling, or display prominence should produce report-ready material that can be lifted into the Article 11 compliance report, the non-confidential summary, or an annex.
Build the self-preferencing review into product release gates for search, marketplace, app-store, feed, video, virtual-assistant, and indexing systems. The control should apply before launch, during experiments, when manual boosting rules change, and when a new gatekeeper-owned product enters a ranked surface.
The release owner should block launch or escalate where the team cannot identify similar third-party offerings, cannot explain why the gatekeeper's own result receives its position, or cannot produce neutral criteria that apply to own and third-party products alike.
No. The DMA definition of ranking covers relative prominence across listed core platform service types and Recital 52 says ranking includes display, rating, linking, voice results, and one-result experiences. A self-preferencing review should therefore cover search results, marketplace display, app-store placement, social feeds, video recommendations, and virtual-assistant answers when the other Article 6(5) facts are present.
Save the affected core platform service and surface, the own and third-party comparison set, ranking or prominence parameters, screenshots or journey samples, before/after results, engineering and policy changes, legal review, release approval, monitoring plan, and the Article 11 report-ready explanation.
Use the cited sources listed here to verify obligations and the supporting evidence requirements.
Verify the following areas from the cited sources: DMA Article 6(5), ranking, indexing, crawling, and compliance-report evidence using the cited sources on this page.
Review a search, marketplace, app-store, feed, video, or assistant release for DMA self-preferencing risk and Article 11 evidence gaps.
"any changes to the customer experience made in connection with the implementation of the measure concerned"
"Gatekeepers are large online platforms that have been designated as such because they provide services to many European users."
"ranking means the relative prominence given to goods or services"
"the gatekeeper shall provide the Commission with a report describing in a detailed and transparent manner the measures it has implemented"
"software applications which are distributed through software application stores, or videos distributed through a video-sharing platform"
"whether through legal, commercial or technical means"