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Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

theguardian.com

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Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#191

Post by pmelendez »

wnevets wrote: post #183
pmelendez wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under that razor... if you search for southwest airlines and between the results you get a Adwords of Southwest, then that won't be an ad because is in the result page of the same thing I was searching?

As a user, sure why not? Why does it matter whether the link you want is within the ad words box or under it? If you're searching for southwest airlines you obviously want the southwest homepage. Now southwest probably sees it different since they're paying for ad words but that's a different conversation

> "southwest probably sees it different since they're paying for ad words but that's a different conversation"

Fair enough :)

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#192

Post by canthonytucci »

r0h1n wrote: post #185
AJ007 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome (v30.0.1599.101 for future reference) -> new tab -> Google + search bar appears above the recent/most popular sites list. I click on the search bar under the Google logo and start typing.. and magically my text does not appear in the text form but rather in the URL field in the navigation bar. What once may have been uneducated behavior is a behavior Google is training users to do.

You're right. Of course Google wants users to search for URLs instead of typing them, because it then gets to show them search results (which can be monetized) instead of just loading up a website. In this case I can understand Southwest may think banner ads help with branding, but what I cannot understand is why so many companies buy the topmost Google text ad even though their websites are already #1 organically?

My guess is so that no one else can get it.

The last thing one of these companies would want is a competitor or some kind of unsavory hanger-on diluting their brand with a different message or viagra ads.

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#193

Post by manojlds »

r0h1n wrote: post #185
AJ007 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome (v30.0.1599.101 for future reference) -> new tab -> Google + search bar appears above the recent/most popular sites list. I click on the search bar under the Google logo and start typing.. and magically my text does not appear in the text form but rather in the URL field in the navigation bar. What once may have been uneducated behavior is a behavior Google is training users to do.

You're right. Of course Google wants users to search for URLs instead of typing them, because it then gets to show them search results (which can be monetized) instead of just loading up a website. In this case I can understand Southwest may think banner ads help with branding, but what I cannot understand is why so many companies buy the topmost Google text ad even though their websites are already #1 organically?

Maybe so that a competitor doesn't?

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#194

Post by raldi »

pmelendez wrote: post #182
raldi wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a promise, in the simplest definition, is not enforceable by law. That's why it's totally different from a contract.

The fact that one of the words is a subset of another depending on the context doesn't invalidate the fact that the words are still synonyms when they are used in a specific topic. Moreover, by what you said before: > "Exchange" is the critical word. A single promise is extraordinarily different... I would conclude that you are actually agreed on how I used it in my original comment: > "and contracts might be dissolv…

The part that's wrong is the part I quoted.

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#195

Post by canthonytucci »

AJ007 wrote: post #178
netcan wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is trialing it for a few carefully selected cases. But even in those cases: - It's not a 100% bet that searchers are looking for the company website. Some will still want stock prices or wikipedia or travel sites or whatnot. For these cases this is a banner funeling more traffic to the company website with a forceful "more pixels" approach. - If the company starts to hit the media for something (especially som…

I can't provide a detailed opinion of this case because I can't recreate what the Guardian screenshot shows, but the end result in this particular case is Southwest airline's cost of traffic is vastly inflated. When this particular user searches "Southwest Airlines", the giant image pushes all of the other results below the fold. The likelihood of the user clicking on an organic listing is very small to zero. While m…

>I hope DuckDuckGo does really well.

I hope they change their name to something that people can take seriously.

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#196

Post by canthonytucci »

I just tried it.

I count:

1 Big ass ad 3 "News" items 5 genuine "Search Results" (with no heading or any way to know when the ads and nonsense stops. One of the 5 is a link to the Southwest Airlines Android App 3 "In-Depth Articles" I don't know what this is, i guess long blog posts?

This honestly looks more to me like a domain squatting BS ad page that we hate on ISPs for than a research tool (which is what I used to think of google search as).

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#197

Post by tedunangst »

mathattack wrote: post #166
tedunangst wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be less evil if Google had to put banner ads up to make payroll? I think so. Google can't really pass this off as "the economic situation forces us to make a really difficult choice."

But is it really any different from a shareholder getting paid versus an employee? These are pension funds and 401ks counting on the money.

Perhaps people invested in Google precisely because they believed in googles vision for a better web. Google has been fairly clear in telling investors, hey there's a line we won't cross. They can't complain. If there's something to complain about, it's sitting on $50 billion in cash and not paying a dividend.

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#198

Post by c0ur7n3y »

canthonytucci wrote: post #192
r0h1n wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. Of course Google wants users to search for URLs instead of typing them, because it then gets to show them search results (which can be monetized) instead of just loading up a website. In this case I can understand Southwest may think banner ads help with branding, but what I cannot understand is why so many companies buy the topmost Google text ad even though their websites are already #1 organically?

My guess is so that no one else can get it. The last thing one of these companies would want is a competitor or some kind of unsavory hanger-on diluting their brand with a different message or viagra ads.

Ah, so it's "new top level domains" all over again. Seems to be a pretty good way to vacuum up money.

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#199

Post by raldi »

makomk wrote: post #187
raldi wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference, in terms of end-user experience, between the links you circled and the ads? They're both to stores selling trash cans.

The difference is that one is what Google think will be the most useful results for users, and the other is what Google think will make them the most money regardless of usefulness.

What if Google can't decide which store is most relevant? Is it okay to use revenue as a tiebreaker?

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#200

Post by cbhl »

netcan wrote: post #146
T-hawk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some cases, it just isn't clear what the right page is. Absolutely. Which is why Google isn't doing this across the board but for carefully selected cases. They'd do it for advertiser clients for whom Google's data demonstrates a vast preponderance of intent to just go to the company's web site by name. I'd bet quite a bit that [southwest airlines] queriers are looking for Southwest's own customer applications (pr…

Google is trialing it for a few carefully selected cases. But even in those cases: - It's not a 100% bet that searchers are looking for the company website. Some will still want stock prices or wikipedia or travel sites or whatnot. For these cases this is a banner funeling more traffic to the company website with a forceful "more pixels" approach. - If the company starts to hit the media for something (especially som…

One hypothesis: someone who is looking for stock prices would search Google Finance or search for "LUV"; someone who is looking for ticket prices will search "YYZ to SFO", and someone who is looking for wikipedia will search "southwest airlines site:en.wikipedia.org".

I suspect that's exactly what this experiment seeks to test. Is this giant banner result more relevant for users searching "southwest airlines" than the knowledge graph box that contains Wikipedia, Stock Prices, and a Flight Status prompt?

If so, then we'll start to see these "banner ads" become more common. If not, they delete some code and everything goes back to the way it was.

Rather than theory-crafting, Google is measuring their users' behaviour. As I feel they should be.

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