Many websites that owe their financial success to Oodles, a popular

­Many websites that owe their financial success to Oodles, a popular search engine, now claim that Oodles has destroyed their business by making slight alterations to the very search algorithm that initially fostered the websites’ success. However, such claims can be confidently rejected as greedy and self-entitled: the websites’ own data shows that the changes in Oodles’ algorithm have only resulted in 8-12% less traffic for the websites than they have grown accustomed to.

Which of the following, if true, would best strengthen the websites’ argument?

A. In recent months internet sales have become so competitive and profit margins so thin that even a slight drop in traffic is catastrophic for a website.
B. Leaked internal Oodles memos show that the search engine was aware that a number of the websites would be affected by the changes.
C. Oodles is not the only search engine on the internet, so the websites could make up the missing traffic elsewhere.
D. The drop in traffic is only temporary while Oodles finetunes the new algorithm.
E. Before making the changes to its algorithm, Oodles asked and received permission from the affected businesses to make the changes.


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