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Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results

blog.keltex.com

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Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results

#41

Post by brlewis »

photon_off wrote: post #39
brlewis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're exaggerating. Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. The part of what you're saying that's true is that people scroll at all. This is new. See http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html

You're both right. Users aren't reluctant to scroll if they believe there is something they want to see. However, most pages are designed so that all of the relevant stuff is above the fold. Most of the time, you just don't need to scroll down, because the page is set up to have the most relevant things above the fold, and the least relevant things below.

We're both right, except for the part where he said that the concept of "the fold" simply doesn't exist for web pages.

Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results

#42

Post by moultano »

patio11 wrote: post #35
moultano wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the cynicism. Do you have any evidence for this whatsoever?

He's absolutely, screamingly right. They're an advertising company. Big bang changes to the website exist to sell more advertising. Everything else they do is window dressing to make people forget that they are an advertising company.

If all Google showed were ads, no one would come to the site. Furthermore, Google is already outrageously profitable. The only real threat is if people start searching somewhere else. Do you really think they would make changes that make that more likely? Google has strong competition in Bing, Yandex, and Baidu. Even if profit were the only relevant motive, short term profitability is not something Google needs to worry about.

It also seems that your argument applies to every ad supported site. Are you contending that the nytimes is in the ad business and not the news business? Is the news mere window dressing for their advertisements? If not, then how are they different from Google?

Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results

#43

Post by bullseye »

spolsky wrote: post #21

Well, Stack Overflow gets about 90% of its traffic from organic search results, on the order of millions of daily page views. The traffic Google sends us did not perceptibly change when they switched to Instant. So anecdotally I can tell you that this is just demonstrably not true for one large-volume site.

Does Google drive a significant amount of organic traffic to Stack Overflow for short term searches?

I permanently disabled Instant after a few searches, so I have no opinion one way or another as to the effects of it on search. However, it seemed like it was designed to be useful for short queries. Stack Overflow, on the other hand, is extremely useful for long tail searches. To be honest, since I typically use SO to solve a specific problem, I don't know what short terms I'd use to land on a page of interest.

Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results

#44

Post by gvb »

spolsky wrote: post #22
spolsky wrote: post #21

Well, Stack Overflow gets about 90% of its traffic from organic search results, on the order of millions of daily page views. The traffic Google sends us did not perceptibly change when they switched to Instant. So anecdotally I can tell you that this is just demonstrably not true for one large-volume site.

Now that I think about it, the whole argument is bogus. For every SERP where your result loses traffic by virtue of falling below the fold, there's probably a SERP where your result gains traffic because the competitors fall below the fold. Sorry, this hypothesis is neither logically correct nor is it backed up by any facts. Do some real experiments next time before you start making claims of having discovered scient…

In addition, the push down of the "fold" only exists as long as the user is doing the "instant" part. As soon as the user decides the search is what he wants and either hits or clicks on it with the mouse, the drop-down box disappears and the results that were "below" the "fold" go back to the original place.

The 25% statistic is also tenuous: if you have a bigger screen than the illustration in the blog, you will have more results shown (i.e. Google will "steal" less than 25% of the results). If you want to be more dramatic, do an instant search with a really small window and OMG!!! Google will "steal" 100% of your results.

Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results

#46

Post by spolsky »

keltex wrote: post #40
spolsky wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any evidence of that?

Which part? The fact that novice users have a hard time distinguishing between PPC and organic results? Anecdotal with the many novice users I have dealt with. That there is less advertising for software related keywords vs. other types of keywords? Try out Google's adwords traffic estimator: https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

Any evidence that "high-volume, high revenue searches are being impacted"?

Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results

#48

Post by swombat »

sprout wrote: post #19
lukev wrote: post #16

No more than having a small monitor steals organic search results.

No, it does steal more. Whatever your monitor size the instant suggestions should steal enough space to knock out an organic result.

It's a damn shame there isn't anything like, say, a scroll wheel or a scroll bar, to look at the results below the fold. That would really sort things out.

Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results

#49

Post by chc »

moultano wrote: post #42
patio11 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's absolutely, screamingly right. They're an advertising company. Big bang changes to the website exist to sell more advertising. Everything else they do is window dressing to make people forget that they are an advertising company.

If all Google showed were ads, no one would come to the site. Furthermore, Google is already outrageously profitable. The only real threat is if people start searching somewhere else. Do you really think they would make changes that make that more likely? Google has strong competition in Bing, Yandex, and Baidu. Even if profit were the only relevant motive, short term profitability is not something Google needs to wo…

That's actually a better characterization of the newspaper industry than you probably mean for it to be. From the editors' perspective, of course it's all about the news (I'm sure this is true for Google's search engineers too). But from the publisher's perspective, the news basically is some very attractive window-dressing.

Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results

#50

Post by moultano »

chc wrote: post #49
moultano wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all Google showed were ads, no one would come to the site. Furthermore, Google is already outrageously profitable. The only real threat is if people start searching somewhere else. Do you really think they would make changes that make that more likely? Google has strong competition in Bing, Yandex, and Baidu. Even if profit were the only relevant motive, short term profitability is not something Google needs to wo…

That's actually a better characterization of the newspaper industry than you probably mean for it to be. From the editors' perspective, of course it's all about the news (I'm sure this is true for Google's search engineers too). But from the publisher's perspective, the news basically is some very attractive window-dressing.

True, but it's Google's search engineers that made this change, not it's ad engineers.
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