Page and Brin themselves once pointed out the problems of accepting ads or paid placement, with some rather ironic examples:
Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results. For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine. In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines. However, there will always be money from advertisers who want a customer to switch products, or have something that is genuinely new. But we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.
The main difference seems to be that today even getting the top organic search result doesn't provide enough clicks for advertisers, so they feel obliged to purchase ads for their own brand names even when they already rank first. If people searching for Southwest Airlines on Google aren't ending up on the Southwest Airlines website without a huge great banner ad (despite it being ranked at the top of the results) then something is going badly wrong on the Google search results page.
"If people searching for Southwest Airlines on Google aren't ending up on the Southwest Airlines website without a huge great banner ad (despite it being ranked at the top of the results) then something is going badly wrong on the Google search results page."
Perhaps the metric being optimised isn't conversion to home page landings. Perhaps there is something deeper in their funnel which benefits from the visual experience starting one click earlier.
The main difference seems to be that today even getting the top organic search result doesn't provide enough clicks for advertisers, so they feel obliged to purchase ads for their own brand names even when they already rank first.
It should be noted that this instance is simply a test and should not be taken as an indication of how these ads will be purchased. While I'm sure there will be numerous advertisers who feel the need to have a large banner when their specific brand is searched for, I expect them to be in the minority. The real question is will I be seeing a banner for Southwest when I search for JetBlue.
>If people searching for Southwest Airlines on Google aren't ending up on the Southwest Airlines website without a huge great banner ad (despite it being ranked at the top of the results) then something is going badly wrong on the Google search results page.
Or maybe they are, and this is simply an example of a branding bonus/partnership for big spenders. We have no idea what the economics are and why.
It can make sense to buy an ad even if you are the top result. It basically makes your top result take up twice as much room. More room = more clicks. It also pushes any competitor links creeping up below your top result from being above the scroll. And of course, with this new sell out mechanic, you get even more than double the space to shove out your competition.
If people searching for Southwest Airlines on Google aren't ending up on the Southwest Airlines website without a huge great banner ad (despite it being ranked at the top of the results) then something is going badly wrong on the Google search results page.
Of course searching for "Southwest Airlines" will result in southwest.com being the first hit. The reason that Southwest buys its own banner is to prevent rival airlines from buying that same name.
I think this is a pretty disingenuous analysis of what's going on. It's obvious from the comparison to the [Virgin America] search that this is a bigger change that just adding a "banner ad".
Notice that for [Virgin America] there are _two_ spots that bring you to virginamerical.com, the ad and the first organic result. This is redundant, wastes space, and probably is confusing to some users. I don't know why a company buys ads for navigational queries where it's already the top result, but they do, and I'd argue it's bad for users.
On the [Southwest Airlines] query you can see that there's no redundant ad anymore - the navigational ad and the first organic result are combined. Calling that whole box and ad, when it contains the same content that the former top organic result used to, is misleading, but makes for a much more sensational headline when you want to claim that most of the screen is ads.
I'm not sure about the experiment, that's not my area, but my guess that this is part of an attempt to not have this ad+organic confusion for navigational queries by allowing the owner of the first result of a nav query to merge the ad with the result into a professional and official looking box. Maybe that'll work, maybe not, which is most likely why it's an experiment.
From my point of view the point here is the "Chinese Wall"[1] that used to exist between organic results and paid advertising.
That used to be clearly defined, and the trust that came from that was one of Google's strengths.
The way the "Sponsored" result hides the organic result for [Southwest Airlines] (by scrolling it off the page) makes that wall redundant - effectively Google is being paid for any click there. Or that's what I think anyway: your comment "the navigational ad and the first organic result are combined" makes me think that Google is actually combining paid and organic results without labelling them separately at all. In that case the "Chinese Wall" is gone completely.
The issue as I see it is that when I click on an ad, I'm not just clicking on another link, I'm adding a bunch of extra cookies to my browser that now track my experience and try to target me even more.
By removing the organic search result you've essentially given me no choice, now I HAVE to click on the cookie generating link, and I HAVE to deal with all that fall out, I might begin searching with Private Browsing because of this, at least then I know that all cookie are destroyed at the end of the session...
I'm very against getting targeted results because it destroys creativity and discovery. It used to be that when I watched a video on youtube when the video was over I'd get a bunch of related videos that were concerned with the same topic (whatever that was) now instead I see links to past videos I've watched that I'm simply not interested at the moment, basically thanks to google's attempt to make me stay on the site longer I usually only watch the video that brought me there before leaving because I'm not interested in watching cat videos or whatever nonsense I watched once but now is appearing next to the videos like a bad non sequitur.
And finally for my last rant: Why did google begin hiding their product from me? it used to be that all their products were prominently displayed at the top of the page, now if I want to use a different product I need to click a non-obvious icon and then scroll to find the product that I want to use, which UX guy came up with this?
"I don't know why a company buys ads for navigational queries where it's already the top result, but they do, and I'd argue it's bad for users."
I preach to my local clients that they want to be in the "map pack", in the organic results AND on AdWords to get the full benefit from Google searches .. even "navigational" searches or searches where they are already #1.
One reason is easy to understand (consumers see your brand in not 1 but 3 places).
But the secondary reason is s direct result of Google favoring or placing paid ads above organic results. If you sell "blue widgets" and rank #1 organically for that term your competitors can still buy ads and rank above you because Google places those ads before the organic results.
Don't want people buying ads for searches where they are already #1? Reduce the prominence of your top ranking ads so that brands don't feel "forced" to do so just to stay competitive.
Giving people a shortcut around organic rankings and being surprised when brands then want to be in both places is kind of ridiculous.
Advertisers see incremental value in advertising on their brand traffic for many reasons including directing traffic, controlling messaging, etc. plus in some cases have seen incremental gains in brand traffic. See this blog post for more details.
Therefore what is interesting to me about combining a paid brand banner ad and organic links is the limited control the advertiser has in directing their brand traffic or controlling the copy whether the headline or site links. They also lose the ability to report on that traffic as paid brand traffic which is probably fine to the advertiser as the traffic is then reflected as a corresponding increase in organic.
Again to spankalee's point it is an experiment so I am sure the functionality will develop over time.
Maybe Google should just add an (opt in?) option to advertisers: if you're the top result, and would normally have an ad on the page -- we don't show any ads but charge for the click on the regular result.
That way you still can't rank #1 by paying for it, but Google gets to present a better UI to the users (less redundant information - less confusion).
edit: On a related note - what's the average revenue per user for Google search -- or how much would they have to charge for an ad-free version? (Ok, that probably wouldn't work, every "ad-free" user would devalue the market for ads) -- but still -- how well would a 10USD/year ad-free Google experience sell? Surely that's much higher than average income per user/year in ads?
"On the [Southwest Airlines] query you can see that there's no redundant ad anymore - the navigational ad and the first organic result are combined. Calling that whole box and ad, when it contains the same content that the former top organic result used to, is misleading, but makes for a much more sensational headline when you want to claim that most of the screen is ads."
Calling that result an "organic search result" is also misleading, more so than calling it an "ad" considering that it is visually dominating the results page.
Would a fairer headline be "Google experimenting with selling search result placement"?
So if it's illogical for companies to buy ad space on queries for which they are the top result...why would they (presumably) fork over even more money to have an attractive banner ad? If a user is searching explicitly for Southwest Airlines...which seems to be the most conceivable non-sinister scenario to show the SA banner ad...how does it help the company or the user to have the interface suddenly change?
Maybe the answer is, "Well, because companies --and their marketing people -- are dumb like that, so, if they want to throw money at us..." Still, seems like it adds more complexity to both the backend logic and the front-end, while at the same time, harming opposing viewpoints. For example, Scientology is the first organic result for a search for "scientology" and thus deserves the opportunity to have a banner ad. And yet the banner ad as presented by the OP would push Scientology's apparently-well-SEOptimized opponents well below the fold.
(not to pick on Scientology, it's just the one religion/group example in which its opponents are almost as well known as the organization itself)
Someone searching for Southwest Airlines is probably looking for... Southwest Airlines. So the very first result is a useful one. With sections of the official website conveniently linked and a pretty picture on top.
This sounds to me like a complete non-issue. If you don't like ads, install AdBlock. Of course if you need clicks for your website, carry on.
Precisely. If Southwest's banner hit for "cheap airfare" or something similar, this would indeed be outrageous. But this just seems like useful (and sponsored) info being offered without needing to click-through.
Look during normal days, having big "southwest airlines" banner ad is ok. But if there is a current event involving "southwest airlines" which might not be beneficial to them (some review, revelation about safety, etc.) this ad will be basically make this event on the second page of the search...
Look, Southwest AirLines are not stupid. Nor Google.
It is just that we are annoyed because there is less and less of "free internet".
It becomes problematic when these companies get control over the content of a brand search. There are ramifications for consumer advocacy. What happens when I start searching for "apple sec ruling" and I am given a full page sponsored ad courtesy of apple? I see that as giving companies a chance to bury insightful or informative content that may not be positive.
There was an interesting earlier this year from EBAY showing that there was ZERO value to buying their own brand keywords from Google (when their organic keywords ranked high).
In fact spending money on their own brand keywords generated signifigant negative ROI (1).
So my guess is that this strategy from Google is designed to provide brands with a first step to generating actual value from Google search results.
I can see brands making these out-sized spends when able to provide their customers w/additional value like interactivity within the goog results, etc.
Perhaps, but Google has already been claiming[1] that such spending provides positive value (though I have no idea how true that is for whatever brands they're pursuing here)
Call me cynical, but I suspect it will still be upvoted and discussed here because any comments on that earlier discussion will get lost in the noise of the close to 200 comments already there.
What are "actual results" for Southwest though? To me it seems like links to check-in, flight status, schedules and customer services is exactly what I'd want to see there. Is the image what you find distracting? But doesn't this give you immediate indication that you got into the right place?
I think the thing people are objecting to is less the image or its associated links, but that that whole thing is an ad. Yeah, it's probably the most relevant result, but it's giving the user (especially if that user is, you know, non-technical) little choice but to click on the thing that puts money in GOOG's pocket.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I find that a little evil.
If you look at this from a retailer perspective this completely makes sense. Important boss man at 'Acme Widgets' wants to type 'Acme Widgets' into Google and see something impressive, with some control over it. He can now pay for the advert with Google rather than pay a bunch of SEO clowns and 'web designers' that typically go over-clever with the homepage design rendering the top search results useless.
Important boss man also wants to get good results for 'acme blue widgets', 'tough widgets Alabama', 'naughty widgets' and whatever but only really cares about those secondary searches when someone else has told him to care about it. It is the main company name, in the search box that matters.
I think this is going to work well for all concerned and I don't share the cynicism most people seem to have about this.
I was worried when I saw this headline, and then very relieved when I saw what was actually going on.
So long as Google only returns these sponsored ads for searches for the company name, I don't see this as being a problem at all, given the fact that many users are using the address bar integrated search in place of bookmarking or typing URLs.
Where this would become a problem is if they start expanding this to searches beyond simply the company name, and I think there is a bit of a gray area there. As someone else pointed out in this thread, showing the Southwest banner in response to a search for "cheap airfare" pretty unambiguously crosses a line, but what abut something like "book southwest airlines flights." One could argue that the user was attempting to get to the southwest airlines website to book a flight, so showing the Southwest banner would be appropriate, however, companies like Expedia, Kayak, and so on, whose links would now be much further down the page, would likely disagree.
Here's the best "malicious" reasoning behind this that I could come up with. Consider the following list of _hypothetical_ statements (as I have no research to back it up):
1. Users tend to ignore the small ads on the right (anecdote: I do)
2. Users do notice and click on search results beneath the top query, even when they originally intended to arrive at their exact branded query
3. Search results beneath the top result are for competitors
Solution: Put in huge "ad" to draw attention and also to knock competitors listings to the very bottom of the screen or off the fold completely
If 1-3 hold true, then I could see it making sense competitively to shove those other results down the page.
Edit: aresant pointed out a good article that could explain the intent. Yay! Also, it wasn't my intent to hate on Google, just a thought experiment.
As far as I'm concerned, the "News" results shown on the bottom 12% aren't quite search results either, though still useful. Everything is below the fold. :(
First, probe the outrage machine for banners for particular brands. Then for a huge price tag, add lightweight widgets to the SERP for brands so searchers can e.g. buy tickets from the Google Search page. This is hailed by the brands as increasing sales dramatically. Demand for this feature grows.
Once significant numbers are using the SERP widgets, make the banners/widgets part of general non-brand search. Natural next step. A little bit of outrage, but at this point it just gets muffled by the masses. Life goes on.
All of these brands are getting increasingly dependent on Google's SERP widgets, which give Google huge leverage power. One deal leads to another and before you know it Google starts buying up airlnes to streamline everything.
So in 2030 we're flying Google Air using a Google phone to buy tickets to the Google Movies, to see a film made by a studio wholly owned by Google.
I'm not even saying this is a Bad Thing (tm). Just that if I were heading Google this would totally be my game plan.
The example they use is navigational query for "Southwest Airlines". As far as I'm concerned, the deep links to South West airlines' site such as "Flight Schedules" are actual search results.
Ignoring that, it's unfair to use one example and say that search results are 12%. Is it 12% average, 12% median, or 12% for navigational queries only?
Sad that the user is being lost in these discussions. I get that people are worried about a slippery slope and boundaries, but this is clearly a better user experience for someone who searched for Southwest Airlines. Put yourself in the position of a human being who just performed a search for Southwest Airlines, would you honestly be angry with that result? No, of course not.
It's ironic that every time one of these "omg, google is pushing organic search results off the page" posts comes up, it's the general public who's obsessed with dollars, whereas Google seems to be concerned for the user. Google makes a ton of money off of advertising because they know how to provide useful user experience. Which isn't surprising really, they have a lot more vested interest in making sure they provide such an experience than arstechnica do.
Sure they want to find ways to align their incentives with the user's incentives, but come on people: think of the people they saved clicking through to www.cheapair.com and www.insanelycheapflights.com
Wow, that's absolute shit. Horrible, horrible, brain-dead move by Google. It won't happen overnight, but this will inevitably wind up pushing people to seek out a better search engine (read: one that doesn't display huge honkin' banner ads like this) and sooner or later, somebody will come along and offer equal (or better!) search results, nix the banner ad, and eat Google's lunch.
Google are so big and powerful that it's easy and tempting to think of them as invulnerable and immortal, but remember... people have thought that about many companies in the past, more than a few of whom are no longer with us.
Edit: OK, IF this really is only for brand names and doesn't show up for more general searches ("cheap airline tickets", etc.) then maybe it won't be received so badly. That said, I still believe that, in general, "big honkin' banner ads" are NOT going to be well received on Google search result pages. I guess time will tell.
“There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.”
Well now, at the moment it is just a pilot program (heh)
But lets assume it doesn't say that way and someone around here needs to search for something like oh
Visual Studio (something or other)
Xcode git integration
Now imagine the glorious Microsoft or Apple ad covering 88% of the screen.
Still don't see the problem? An ad targeted the way this one is isn't useful for anything other than gauging reaction. For it to be useful they will have to show up on related searches, not ones that are specifically for that product or service.
This doesn't seem to be a very fair comparison. You cant compare a search for "maps" with a search for an actual company in this case "Southwest Airlines." I would expect that a search for a company even earlier in googles history would have been links mainly to southwest owned pages.
So SWA is a pretty specific example, but what about Apple? What about when you are searching for, well, information about apples? And can SWA ever own the term "Southwest"? When you think it out, it's not as cut and dry as it first seems.
[+] [-] anon1385|12 years ago|reply
Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results. For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine. In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines. However, there will always be money from advertisers who want a customer to switch products, or have something that is genuinely new. But we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
The main difference seems to be that today even getting the top organic search result doesn't provide enough clicks for advertisers, so they feel obliged to purchase ads for their own brand names even when they already rank first. If people searching for Southwest Airlines on Google aren't ending up on the Southwest Airlines website without a huge great banner ad (despite it being ranked at the top of the results) then something is going badly wrong on the Google search results page.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|12 years ago|reply
Perhaps the metric being optimised isn't conversion to home page landings. Perhaps there is something deeper in their funnel which benefits from the visual experience starting one click earlier.
[+] [-] killwhitey|12 years ago|reply
It should be noted that this instance is simply a test and should not be taken as an indication of how these ads will be purchased. While I'm sure there will be numerous advertisers who feel the need to have a large banner when their specific brand is searched for, I expect them to be in the minority. The real question is will I be seeing a banner for Southwest when I search for JetBlue.
[+] [-] Recoil42|12 years ago|reply
Or maybe they are, and this is simply an example of a branding bonus/partnership for big spenders. We have no idea what the economics are and why.
[+] [-] lnanek2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] znowi|12 years ago|reply
Choose the path of the Jedi - use DDG!
https://duckduckgo.com/
[+] [-] vecter|12 years ago|reply
Of course searching for "Southwest Airlines" will result in southwest.com being the first hit. The reason that Southwest buys its own banner is to prevent rival airlines from buying that same name.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] spankalee|12 years ago|reply
I think this is a pretty disingenuous analysis of what's going on. It's obvious from the comparison to the [Virgin America] search that this is a bigger change that just adding a "banner ad".
Notice that for [Virgin America] there are _two_ spots that bring you to virginamerical.com, the ad and the first organic result. This is redundant, wastes space, and probably is confusing to some users. I don't know why a company buys ads for navigational queries where it's already the top result, but they do, and I'd argue it's bad for users.
On the [Southwest Airlines] query you can see that there's no redundant ad anymore - the navigational ad and the first organic result are combined. Calling that whole box and ad, when it contains the same content that the former top organic result used to, is misleading, but makes for a much more sensational headline when you want to claim that most of the screen is ads.
I'm not sure about the experiment, that's not my area, but my guess that this is part of an attempt to not have this ad+organic confusion for navigational queries by allowing the owner of the first result of a nav query to merge the ad with the result into a professional and official looking box. Maybe that'll work, maybe not, which is most likely why it's an experiment.
[+] [-] nl|12 years ago|reply
From my point of view the point here is the "Chinese Wall"[1] that used to exist between organic results and paid advertising.
That used to be clearly defined, and the trust that came from that was one of Google's strengths.
The way the "Sponsored" result hides the organic result for [Southwest Airlines] (by scrolling it off the page) makes that wall redundant - effectively Google is being paid for any click there. Or that's what I think anyway: your comment "the navigational ad and the first organic result are combined" makes me think that Google is actually combining paid and organic results without labelling them separately at all. In that case the "Chinese Wall" is gone completely.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall
[+] [-] vxNsr|12 years ago|reply
I'm very against getting targeted results because it destroys creativity and discovery. It used to be that when I watched a video on youtube when the video was over I'd get a bunch of related videos that were concerned with the same topic (whatever that was) now instead I see links to past videos I've watched that I'm simply not interested at the moment, basically thanks to google's attempt to make me stay on the site longer I usually only watch the video that brought me there before leaving because I'm not interested in watching cat videos or whatever nonsense I watched once but now is appearing next to the videos like a bad non sequitur.
And finally for my last rant: Why did google begin hiding their product from me? it used to be that all their products were prominently displayed at the top of the page, now if I want to use a different product I need to click a non-obvious icon and then scroll to find the product that I want to use, which UX guy came up with this?
[+] [-] josefresco|12 years ago|reply
I preach to my local clients that they want to be in the "map pack", in the organic results AND on AdWords to get the full benefit from Google searches .. even "navigational" searches or searches where they are already #1.
One reason is easy to understand (consumers see your brand in not 1 but 3 places).
But the secondary reason is s direct result of Google favoring or placing paid ads above organic results. If you sell "blue widgets" and rank #1 organically for that term your competitors can still buy ads and rank above you because Google places those ads before the organic results.
Don't want people buying ads for searches where they are already #1? Reduce the prominence of your top ranking ads so that brands don't feel "forced" to do so just to stay competitive.
Giving people a shortcut around organic rankings and being surprised when brands then want to be in both places is kind of ridiculous.
[+] [-] hhw3h|12 years ago|reply
Advertisers see incremental value in advertising on their brand traffic for many reasons including directing traffic, controlling messaging, etc. plus in some cases have seen incremental gains in brand traffic. See this blog post for more details.
http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/the-cardinal-sin-of-paid-sea...
Therefore what is interesting to me about combining a paid brand banner ad and organic links is the limited control the advertiser has in directing their brand traffic or controlling the copy whether the headline or site links. They also lose the ability to report on that traffic as paid brand traffic which is probably fine to the advertiser as the traffic is then reflected as a corresponding increase in organic.
Again to spankalee's point it is an experiment so I am sure the functionality will develop over time.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] radley|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e12e|12 years ago|reply
That way you still can't rank #1 by paying for it, but Google gets to present a better UI to the users (less redundant information - less confusion).
edit: On a related note - what's the average revenue per user for Google search -- or how much would they have to charge for an ad-free version? (Ok, that probably wouldn't work, every "ad-free" user would devalue the market for ads) -- but still -- how well would a 10USD/year ad-free Google experience sell? Surely that's much higher than average income per user/year in ads?
[+] [-] mcguire|12 years ago|reply
Calling that result an "organic search result" is also misleading, more so than calling it an "ad" considering that it is visually dominating the results page.
Would a fairer headline be "Google experimenting with selling search result placement"?
[+] [-] danso|12 years ago|reply
Maybe the answer is, "Well, because companies --and their marketing people -- are dumb like that, so, if they want to throw money at us..." Still, seems like it adds more complexity to both the backend logic and the front-end, while at the same time, harming opposing viewpoints. For example, Scientology is the first organic result for a search for "scientology" and thus deserves the opportunity to have a banner ad. And yet the banner ad as presented by the OP would push Scientology's apparently-well-SEOptimized opponents well below the fold.
(not to pick on Scientology, it's just the one religion/group example in which its opponents are almost as well known as the organization itself)
[+] [-] barista|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spindritf|12 years ago|reply
This sounds to me like a complete non-issue. If you don't like ads, install AdBlock. Of course if you need clicks for your website, carry on.
[+] [-] pkfrank|12 years ago|reply
Somewhat sensationalist.
[+] [-] tlogan|12 years ago|reply
Look during normal days, having big "southwest airlines" banner ad is ok. But if there is a current event involving "southwest airlines" which might not be beneficial to them (some review, revelation about safety, etc.) this ad will be basically make this event on the second page of the search...
Look, Southwest AirLines are not stupid. Nor Google.
It is just that we are annoyed because there is less and less of "free internet".
[+] [-] Finster|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tedunangst|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aresant|12 years ago|reply
In fact spending money on their own brand keywords generated signifigant negative ROI (1).
So my guess is that this strategy from Google is designed to provide brands with a first step to generating actual value from Google search results.
I can see brands making these out-sized spends when able to provide their customers w/additional value like interactivity within the goog results, etc.
(1) http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/03/did-ebay-just-prove-that-paid/
[+] [-] joshuahedlund|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://searchengineland.com/ebay-says-adwords-ineffective-go... > On average, 50% of the ad clicks that occurred with a top rank organic result are incremental, i.e., they would not be recovered organically if the ad campaign is paused.
[+] [-] ColinWright|12 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6605312
Same story (but no real discussion) was submitted here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6604925
Call me cynical, but I suspect it will still be upvoted and discussed here because any comments on that earlier discussion will get lost in the noise of the close to 200 comments already there.
[+] [-] eliben|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rosser|12 years ago|reply
I can't speak for anyone else, but I find that a little evil.
[+] [-] tedunangst|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Theodores|12 years ago|reply
Important boss man also wants to get good results for 'acme blue widgets', 'tough widgets Alabama', 'naughty widgets' and whatever but only really cares about those secondary searches when someone else has told him to care about it. It is the main company name, in the search box that matters.
I think this is going to work well for all concerned and I don't share the cynicism most people seem to have about this.
[+] [-] LeafyGreenbriar|12 years ago|reply
So long as Google only returns these sponsored ads for searches for the company name, I don't see this as being a problem at all, given the fact that many users are using the address bar integrated search in place of bookmarking or typing URLs.
Where this would become a problem is if they start expanding this to searches beyond simply the company name, and I think there is a bit of a gray area there. As someone else pointed out in this thread, showing the Southwest banner in response to a search for "cheap airfare" pretty unambiguously crosses a line, but what abut something like "book southwest airlines flights." One could argue that the user was attempting to get to the southwest airlines website to book a flight, so showing the Southwest banner would be appropriate, however, companies like Expedia, Kayak, and so on, whose links would now be much further down the page, would likely disagree.
[+] [-] jrockway|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muraiki|12 years ago|reply
1. Users tend to ignore the small ads on the right (anecdote: I do)
2. Users do notice and click on search results beneath the top query, even when they originally intended to arrive at their exact branded query
3. Search results beneath the top result are for competitors
Solution: Put in huge "ad" to draw attention and also to knock competitors listings to the very bottom of the screen or off the fold completely
If 1-3 hold true, then I could see it making sense competitively to shove those other results down the page.
Edit: aresant pointed out a good article that could explain the intent. Yay! Also, it wasn't my intent to hate on Google, just a thought experiment.
[+] [-] scott_karana|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aegiso|12 years ago|reply
First, probe the outrage machine for banners for particular brands. Then for a huge price tag, add lightweight widgets to the SERP for brands so searchers can e.g. buy tickets from the Google Search page. This is hailed by the brands as increasing sales dramatically. Demand for this feature grows.
Once significant numbers are using the SERP widgets, make the banners/widgets part of general non-brand search. Natural next step. A little bit of outrage, but at this point it just gets muffled by the masses. Life goes on.
All of these brands are getting increasingly dependent on Google's SERP widgets, which give Google huge leverage power. One deal leads to another and before you know it Google starts buying up airlnes to streamline everything.
So in 2030 we're flying Google Air using a Google phone to buy tickets to the Google Movies, to see a film made by a studio wholly owned by Google.
I'm not even saying this is a Bad Thing (tm). Just that if I were heading Google this would totally be my game plan.
[+] [-] r00fus|12 years ago|reply
Google will never buy airlines, it'd be like Apple taking over the music industry.
Besides, Airlines are a very low-margin business. How would a GOOG investor react to them taking on such a margins-killing subsidiary?
[+] [-] shuw|12 years ago|reply
Ignoring that, it's unfair to use one example and say that search results are 12%. Is it 12% average, 12% median, or 12% for navigational queries only?
[+] [-] wahsd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] radley|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] indiefan|12 years ago|reply
It's ironic that every time one of these "omg, google is pushing organic search results off the page" posts comes up, it's the general public who's obsessed with dollars, whereas Google seems to be concerned for the user. Google makes a ton of money off of advertising because they know how to provide useful user experience. Which isn't surprising really, they have a lot more vested interest in making sure they provide such an experience than arstechnica do.
Sure they want to find ways to align their incentives with the user's incentives, but come on people: think of the people they saved clicking through to www.cheapair.com and www.insanelycheapflights.com
[+] [-] mindcrime|12 years ago|reply
Google are so big and powerful that it's easy and tempting to think of them as invulnerable and immortal, but remember... people have thought that about many companies in the past, more than a few of whom are no longer with us.
Edit: OK, IF this really is only for brand names and doesn't show up for more general searches ("cheap airline tickets", etc.) then maybe it won't be received so badly. That said, I still believe that, in general, "big honkin' banner ads" are NOT going to be well received on Google search result pages. I guess time will tell.
[+] [-] walshemj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktr100|12 years ago|reply
“There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.”
http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2005/12/about-aol-announcem...
[+] [-] slouch|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mikeb85|12 years ago|reply
I just did a few searches for educational topics, got no ads. ... I would say there isn't a problem...
[+] [-] mhurron|12 years ago|reply
But lets assume it doesn't say that way and someone around here needs to search for something like oh
Visual Studio (something or other) Xcode git integration
Now imagine the glorious Microsoft or Apple ad covering 88% of the screen.
Still don't see the problem? An ad targeted the way this one is isn't useful for anything other than gauging reaction. For it to be useful they will have to show up on related searches, not ones that are specifically for that product or service.
[+] [-] stingrae|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toddmorey|12 years ago|reply