Went to my default search (DDG) - Basecamp is the first result on top and then third result. Wikipedia page about them is also on top to the right side. Disabled adblocker - surprise surprise, got same results :) .
Opened Google without adblocker - now that's pathetic - two ads on top from Monday and Teamwork companies, then third result is Basecamp. Wikipedia result is below the fold, 8th result.
This is one of the reasons why I dropped Google as main search engine two years ago and opened it maybe five or ten times this year (for non-english highly sepicific queries). Google search is simply not the top one now and privacy concern too.
Try searching for building materials, The entire first page is pretty much just ads. I did a local search for garden tiles, 9 actual search results, somewhere between 7 and 22 ads (depending on what you count as "one" ads).
In many cases Google is just an online ad catalog, not a search engine.
Yeah, I had wondered why companies advertise on their own name. The other day I was looking up ad word ideas, and the cheapest option was to run it against a top player in the field. Search volume was as high as a generic search, but only cost 1c instead of $4 for the generic keyword.
Couple that with how most people click the first link on the page (no accident mind you), it’s just downright extortion by Google.
Which brand did you check? If the disparity is really as high as 1¢ vs $4 then my guess is the brand is sending cease-and-desist letters to people who advertise on their trademark.
(Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on search ads. This is coming from my experience buying search ads pre-Google)
This is pretty normal, especially when their are lots of rival companies doing the same thing. I used to work for a food ordering company and they felt they had no choice but to advertise their own name as rivals were using their brand name as a keyword. It wasn't cheap either, some weeks it could be as much as a few hundred euro.
Personally, I feel it crosses am ethical line. As a customer if I search for foo.bar and the first couple of result are for rival companies then Google isn't providing me with the service it claims it would. And as a business I would be forced to effectively double spend. Firstly, I would be spending time and effort on SEO to get to the top of the rankings, and then spent again to get to the top of the adverts that are obfuscating the real search results.
I know Google is a for-profit company operating in a free economy, but they still have to be ethical in what they do.
Google knows what they're doing. Being a private enterprise, they can block you from "buying" the competence name (TM) to put your own product.
Just try to buy "Google" term to advertise your business (let's say you are Dropbox and want to buy "Google" and "Drive")... Yeah, they had it blocked. But you can buy "one drive", which is unfair albeit legal. It's not as the terms in dispute were "project", "management", "time", "team". It's the brand name, which incidentally in the case of Basecamp has zero relation with what they're selling.
If Google wanted a fair play they would come with something akin to the Trade Mark laws built in house.
I think the devils-advocate argument is that Google is essentially a de-facto DNS for much of the world, and is using (abusing?) this position to place ads, distractions, and/or misdirection in between searchers and their destinations.
Another interesting one is trustpilot. According to web shop people I know, it's well known that people who complain require less motivation to write than satisfied customers. So the model is basically that you're forced to pay them to motivate positive reviews to compensate for the negatives.
Or it's just that most interactions with stores are really mediocre. If I buy something in a store, it was reasonably priced, it gets delivered within the promised time frame and is not damaged then that's very much par for the course in terms of what I expect from a webshop. It's not "5/5 AMAZING store, will always buy things from here!", it's just so much easier to slide downwards on that scale than move up.
This article motivated me to figure out why I see those ads in the first place. If you're on uBlock Origin, go to the dashboard and look for a filter list under "annoyances". Mine was switched off.
When I search in the Dutch App Store for 'Coolblue', a big online retailer here, the first thing I see is an ad for the 'Bol.com' app, the biggest online retailer here (our Amazon-like website, with the same shady partner practices).
Below that is the actual Coolblue app.
So this is what happens when the competitor pays more for ads on your own name than you do.
There was a time, before Google existed, when the "top result" was not assumed to be the "best" result. The researcher was expected to examine more than just the first entry in a list of citations. Google advertising targets users who place considerable confidence in the ordering of results, despite not knowing the details of the algorithm used.
Google was always extremely proud of the fact that, unlike Yahoo, Altavista, etc., you couldn't buy the top spots. The organic results looked very different from the couple one-line ads at the top or side.
Now, if I search without an ad block for something like "screws" I get
1. Two ads that look like search results (same 3-4 line excerpt, same links into internal results, same "more" dropdown), except for a little box that says "Ad". This takes up 1/2 of my screen.
2. A full-screen height worth of map and links to physical stores (have no idea if they're paid for or not)
I think the only thing at fault here is Google's UI. I don't have a problem with companies having two tracks to the front page of Google (organic and paid placement), but the ads take up so much space at the top, and they are so poorly differentiated from organic results.
My analogy is the yellow pages, which is two things: A vehicle for ads, and a reference list of phone numbers. The sections are distinguished, by white/yellow pages for business/personal numbers, and with ads standing apart and looking different on the page. And YP never screwed with alpha order. They can make their money on ads and you can use the phone book for its raison d'être: a list of businesses/people.
> this site lets companies advertise against us using our brand
As they should. If your product is an alternative to $bigbrand then this gives you the best visibility.
> When Google puts 4 paid ads ahead of the first organic result for your own brand name, you’re forced to pay up if you want to be found. It’s a shakedown. It’s ransom.
No. Your brand is the first actual result. You might argue that four is a bit much or that it should be clearer that these are adds (can you even see those when running an ad blocker?), but "our competitors are running advertisements" is definitely not a shakedown or ransom.
Advertisements look like real search results, though, and being able to bury a company just because you're paying money to run ads using their name (not a generic search term) is just bad behavior.
I wonder, some countries have laws that forbid you to use the brand of others to promote your own product. So why would it be legal to buy other companys brand as a keyword when buying ads?
I am not sure why it happens, but since about a year google became extremely aggressive with search ads. It was infuriating because they were reliably scammy ads for three-random-trending-words domains.
Probably because they prefer, or think they prefer, Google results to DDG results and don't realize that a decent company (ixquick developer) runs the domain StartPage.com https://www.startpage.com/ (which has a very AOLish, Web 1.0 sound to it). Startpage serves up Google results. DDG serves up everything but Google, I think.
The Google tax is real. Merchants see it as a cost of business, consumers are insulated from it to the point where all they see is a wonderful “free” product from Google.
The reality is if we didn’t have to do defensive ads on our organic results my company could probably offer 30% lower pricing. But because there’s no easy way to discriminate against google ad clickers we have to charge the Google tax to everyone, as most businesses do.
The end result is that nobody cries foul to the search monopoly and its cost to society. Google gets to charge monopolistic pricing without anyone noticing.
In the US the only things that matter in trademark are Lanham Act matters, specifically whether there's a likelihood of confusion (ignoring for the moment active use in commerce and other infringement elements). Simply returning a competitor's ad when searching someone else's trade name isn't enough (citation needed).
If you have a registered trademark you can have Google block other advertisers from visually using your trademark in an ad. However, that doesn't prevent them from using the trademark as the keyword target (the non-visible part of the ad).
I was just looking for garmin's basecamp a couple of weeks ago and caught myself mid-type, realizing that simply searching for "basecamp" will find the IT company.
[+] [-] Yizahi|6 years ago|reply
Opened Google without adblocker - now that's pathetic - two ads on top from Monday and Teamwork companies, then third result is Basecamp. Wikipedia result is below the fold, 8th result.
This is one of the reasons why I dropped Google as main search engine two years ago and opened it maybe five or ten times this year (for non-english highly sepicific queries). Google search is simply not the top one now and privacy concern too.
[+] [-] mrweasel|6 years ago|reply
In many cases Google is just an online ad catalog, not a search engine.
[+] [-] tim333|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cloogshicer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] satya71|6 years ago|reply
Couple that with how most people click the first link on the page (no accident mind you), it’s just downright extortion by Google.
[+] [-] jefftk|6 years ago|reply
(Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on search ads. This is coming from my experience buying search ads pre-Google)
[+] [-] chrshawkes|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoubleGlazing|6 years ago|reply
Personally, I feel it crosses am ethical line. As a customer if I search for foo.bar and the first couple of result are for rival companies then Google isn't providing me with the service it claims it would. And as a business I would be forced to effectively double spend. Firstly, I would be spending time and effort on SEO to get to the top of the rankings, and then spent again to get to the top of the adverts that are obfuscating the real search results.
I know Google is a for-profit company operating in a free economy, but they still have to be ethical in what they do.
[+] [-] jiveturkey|6 years ago|reply
If Google has to be ethical, doesn't Uber have to be ethical?
If Google and Uber have to be ethical, doesn't Blackwater/Xe/Academi have to be ethical?
[+] [-] TekMol|6 years ago|reply
Would it be better if some companies would be entitled to exlusively advertise for certain terms?
I don't think so.
[+] [-] otherme123|6 years ago|reply
Just try to buy "Google" term to advertise your business (let's say you are Dropbox and want to buy "Google" and "Drive")... Yeah, they had it blocked. But you can buy "one drive", which is unfair albeit legal. It's not as the terms in dispute were "project", "management", "time", "team". It's the brand name, which incidentally in the case of Basecamp has zero relation with what they're selling.
If Google wanted a fair play they would come with something akin to the Trade Mark laws built in house.
[+] [-] afiori|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bo1024|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dillonmckay|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lordnacho|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TrickyRick|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lazyjones|6 years ago|reply
How does paying them result in positive reviews?
[+] [-] buboard|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lordnacho|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rahkiin|6 years ago|reply
So this is what happens when the competitor pays more for ads on your own name than you do.
[+] [-] Shivetya|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3xblah|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SamBam|6 years ago|reply
Now, if I search without an ad block for something like "screws" I get
1. Two ads that look like search results (same 3-4 line excerpt, same links into internal results, same "more" dropdown), except for a little box that says "Ad". This takes up 1/2 of my screen.
2. A full-screen height worth of map and links to physical stores (have no idea if they're paid for or not)
3. My results
[+] [-] philshem|6 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20871677
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20874268
and direct link to twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016
[+] [-] Brendinooo|6 years ago|reply
My analogy is the yellow pages, which is two things: A vehicle for ads, and a reference list of phone numbers. The sections are distinguished, by white/yellow pages for business/personal numbers, and with ads standing apart and looking different on the page. And YP never screwed with alpha order. They can make their money on ads and you can use the phone book for its raison d'être: a list of businesses/people.
[+] [-] diffeomorphism|6 years ago|reply
As they should. If your product is an alternative to $bigbrand then this gives you the best visibility.
> When Google puts 4 paid ads ahead of the first organic result for your own brand name, you’re forced to pay up if you want to be found. It’s a shakedown. It’s ransom.
No. Your brand is the first actual result. You might argue that four is a bit much or that it should be clearer that these are adds (can you even see those when running an ad blocker?), but "our competitors are running advertisements" is definitely not a shakedown or ransom.
[+] [-] saagarjha|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrweasel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afiori|6 years ago|reply
It was my main reason for switching to duckduckgo
[+] [-] sm4rk0|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] defective|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] The_rationalist|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asah|6 years ago|reply
Naive algorithm: if (search term exactly matches the domain of one of the ads) { disable_all_search_ads(); }
(Extend to handle partial matches, alternate spellings, etc)
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] chrischen|6 years ago|reply
The reality is if we didn’t have to do defensive ads on our organic results my company could probably offer 30% lower pricing. But because there’s no easy way to discriminate against google ad clickers we have to charge the Google tax to everyone, as most businesses do.
The end result is that nobody cries foul to the search monopoly and its cost to society. Google gets to charge monopolistic pricing without anyone noticing.
[+] [-] PostOnce|6 years ago|reply
If I search for medicine, maybe they'll show me an ad for homeopathy. Maybe I'm gullible.
If I search Reliable Product X and I get an ad for Garbage Product Y...
Eventually, doesn't this de-value Google's own brand as being the place where you go to find... what you typed into the search bar?
[+] [-] buboard|6 years ago|reply
Google doesn't have an awesome ads platform at this time. They just have no competition
[+] [-] Angostura|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] howard941|6 years ago|reply
You might ask whether state bar ethics rules have a different take? And the answer is yes, with results all over the place. This DDG search may be of interest: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22bar%22+buying+competitors+keywo...
[+] [-] Uw7yTcf36gTc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carty76ers|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokai|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stanski|6 years ago|reply
My brain did a pre-google.
[+] [-] ultraism|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laputan_machine|6 years ago|reply
I'd also argue that Basecamp (the service) is more known than Garmin Basecamp, _especially_ in these circles, DHH is definitely not some 'no-name' :)
[+] [-] chrischen|6 years ago|reply