[dannysullivan]

What was tweeted isn't what the page says. I work for Google Search. That's about our Honest Results policy, which means we don't allow people to buy better rankings in non-paid Search results: https://www.google.com/about/honestresults/

Like many newspapers separate ads and editorial, Google has a strict separation between our Ads departments and our Search departments -- and our results. Buying ads will not gain you any better ability to rank in the non-paid Search results. Nor will it get you any special support.

That's what the page explains. It never says we don't have ads that show at the top of the page and, in fact, acknowledges that we do: "While advertisers can pay more to be displayed higher in the advertising area." Nor is it true that at the time, we only had ads that appeared on the right-side of the page. Google's first ads appeared at the top of the page way back in 1999.

In addition, we continue to keep ads separated from Search and labeled so they can be identified.

I totally get that some people would like to see fewer ads. I don't work on the Ad side of Google, but I know that feedback has been heard.

[runnerup]

> I totally get that some people would like to see fewer ads.

I'd like to be very clear: On the google Search property, it's less about the number of ads, and more about "ads look very, very, very similar to the actual search results". Therefore, selling ads above the results is becoming very, very close to "selling search results". In fact for many of your customers, that is already a distinction without a difference. If you want to be taken seriously on this it's best to respond to a steel-man of the public's argument, even if the actual line of argument from the public is somewhat weakly presented. After all, you are the professional in public communication, we are the amateurs.

Most readers on HN are already well aware of the narrow distinction between "selling search results" and "selling ads above search results that (to many users) look exactly like search results". Some people are here trying to bring this issue to the forefront of discourse in order to help Google take action to strengthen their Search property.

It's hard to take your word as an official "PR Liaison for Search" word at face value on this when it lacks sufficiently rigorous introspection. The primary revenue-generating division for a $2 trillion company should be able to afford real introspection!

[tofuahdude]

Google has a long history of making their ad placements look more like their search placements.

The ads used to be a clearly yellow block. Then it became more and more faded yellow-to-white. Today, the ads have literally the exact same CSS, except that they do say "Ad" at the start, the legally mandated minimum disclosure.

How do you reconcile this?

To me, "honest" is already dishonest, in that Google deliberately tries to make ads vs search results visually ambiguous and thus the ads at the top are barely different from paid search placement.

[sullivandanny]

The Honest Results policy is that we're not going to allow advertisers or partners or any one with a relationship to Google to have an advantage in our unpaid search results.

As for ad labeling, I don't work on the ad side. I work on the Search side. My understanding from those on the ad side is that the labels are visible and do work. And ads are always labeled.

[NelsonMinar]

Thank you for correcting this Danny.