Ryanair challenges Google as O’Leary boards passengers

He adds: “Ryanair will continue to pursue screenscraper websites such as eDreams to prevent Europe’s consumers from being misled over price and booking conditions”.

In a press release, the airline points to a search for term “Ryanair”, which returns an ad from what appears to be the official airline itself, but actually misleads customers into buying their flights from a so called “screen-scraper” site.

Ryanair says that websites such as eDreams are paying Google to have their ads ranked above the company’s own site, so that they top the list of results when consumers search for the airline.

Customers are offered lower fares than are available on Ryanair, although customer service and booking fees eventually inflate the price above that offered by Ryanair.

The Court of Hamburg recently ruled that the website eDreams has been using an unlawful subdomain and was misleading customers into thinking that it had an official partnership with Ryanair.

Ryanair says it has taken legal action against several screenscraper websites across Europe.

The airline says sites such as eDreams, which display Ryanair flight data, appear above it due to them investing in Google’s sponsored search.

To clamp down upon the practises, Ryanair chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs has called upon Google to “enforce greater transparency on its advertising rules, to prevent European customers being misled and overcharged”.

Ryanair has asked Google to enforce greater transparency on its online advertising after claiming its customers are being misled into booking its flights on third party websites “masquerading” as Ryanair. He said: “Customers end up paying more and with complications down the line, it’s overall a bad experience, and we think Google can do better than that”.

The Irish airline has not yet filed an official complaint against Google with UK’s Advertising Standards Authority, Business Insider reported.

It was not possible to contact Google for a comment.