Google Allows Sponsored Rankings...In Ads

A number of written that the sky is fallen because Google is allowing sponsored rankings. Of course, if you read the article it's the sponsored links on the right side of the page - where the ads have always been.

Comments

This is the way it should have been.

[lw54]

Under a new feature scheduled to launch Tuesday night, the rankings of a search engine devoted to advertisers will be determined in part by how much Web sites offer to be listed in specific categories.

Before, all advertisers paid a set fee and were randomly displayed in random order. Now there highest paying customers are shown first.

While I wish they didn't do this, as it affects our advertising budget, I think this is logical and I support their decision to make money. After all, if google doesn't make money, they'll go under and we'll all lose access to the best search engine.

Re:This is the way it should have been.

[bentini]

Actually, it's even better than you describe it. The highest paying customers are probably shown first. However, they also factor in how good the pages are (as judged by how many people click-through the links), so the most popular pages are shown first, even over money. Therefore, if I search for a product name: say, purify (a program to check C code dynamically), and there are 10 people who have paid more than that company to sell products branded purify that are not at all what I or anyone else want (spam spam spam spam), it still won't show up.
They've instituted a safeguard so not only is spamming not useful, it's barely an option. The items that people are most often interested in are the ones that you'll see most prominently.
Go Google!

Link to another search engine for the story?

[EricKrout.com]

I don't see why you linked to another search engine for the story.

You could have simply gotten the information from the horse's mouth.

Linking to an article that tries to stir controversy and sway readers away from Google is highly sketchy. Google has nothing to hide by this, and even the Slashdot editor who posted this story admitted that it's nothing more than they've already BEEN doing.

They sell ads that show up on the side. We'll always know which results are real and which aren't. The real ones show up in the middle; the results that are paid-for advertisements show up on the right in colored boxes and are clearly marked as advertisements.

Most of the time these "advertisements" are more often useful things than typical gimmicks that you find with image banner ads (i.e. click the monkey - win cash!, if this is flashing you won $100,000, etc etc etc).

It's fine when you dump on Microsoft because they're evil ;-)

But don't sling mud at Google. They're just trying to stay profitable so we can continue to use their great service.

EricKrout.com :: 9 Out Of 10 People Use Me

The Sky Has Not Fallen

[MathJMendl]

At first, this article concerns me. "Search engines" like Overture that charge for listings seriously affect the quality of the services, as well as their integrity. Google, though, has clearly distinguished advertisements as what they are, labeling them as such and using different backround colors from them. For this reason, I respect Google, and have continued to use it (as well as for the fact that it is the best search engine and is closely integrated with the ODP, which I sometimes edit for).

The few key points that prevent me from worrying me about this are these:

Google also intends to maintain strong firewalls between the business and search sides of its operations.

"We take our editorial integrity very seriously, just like a newspaper does," Kordestani said.

Google will display up to eight advertisers on the far right-hand side of its Web page under a shaded section labeled "sponsored links."

They will continue to distinguish between search engine results and advertisements and keep the ads separate from the results, to the right side of the screen. For this reason, that article and the title of this on SlashDot seem to be alarmist and misleading. Google is maintaining its integrity, at least for now.

One might also note that Excite, which published this article, uses Overture for its results, and labels them "Search Results for: [term]." Might they have a bias?

Let the market take care of this...

[El Camino SS]

Its all about cost/benefit analysis...

The last time I checked, google is allowed to make a profit. Google is also allowed to fail miserably if the customers don't like it.

Goes right back to the free market world, and costs.
So if "the cost" of trying to find something on the net gets too high on google, then google will be forced to find another source of revenue when their customers leave.

Simple as that. The market is a harsh place. If we love our google, we have to pay for it. Otherwise, no money means no google. So you have to scroll down the page. Well, that is a cost of freeloading. Ask the people who used to pay for Lexis/Nexis (sp?) what solid, usable information costs.

Even abcnews.go.com has banners before you get to the news. It is coming. Really, it is a minor annoyance, and not much more IMHO. I certainly won't stop using google. I hope the make all the money in the world, they serve a real purpose on the net.

Overture?

[modulus]

What's interesting about this post not what the article claims to be about. The article, running on an Excite web site, is fairly clearly written deceptively to make Google look bad. It throws in what amounts to an ad for these ridiculous Overture people.

A quick google search on "Excite Overture" leads to an article about how Overture is the company that runs paid ads on the Excite search engine.

So this story is not about how some people are stupid and think google is shady, but about how some people at Excite apparently are both stupid and shady.

Google slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the cached version

Hooray again as Google leads the way

[dinotrac]

The interesting part of the article to me is that Google is aggressively looking for ways to make money (like good little capitalists are supposed to be doing) without compromising their integrity (which good little capitalists are supposed to do, but many seem to grow tired of reading the book before they reach that part).

It's sadly quaint to work on the proposition that high integrity is an asset to a money-making company. Google appears to understand this with their refusal to dilute the value of their search results.

Here's hoping that they prove to the world that making money hand over fist is consistant with that attitude, maybe even derived from it.

It's not that pure...

[alexhmit01]

The old system was CPM, you paid per thousand impressions. The new system that they added on top of the old system is CPC, you pay for the clickthrough.

In Overture (goto.com, renamed) you are ranked by bid. If I want to close out a category, I can try to sneak in some irrelevant links (irrelevant with poor wording, for example) to minimize clickthroughs. I've still blocked a space from the competitor, but I likely pay little because I won't get clicked on.

The reason that this makes sense for Google is purely economic. Right now, in popular categories, their adwords are over-subscribed because people can't win the search terms. In unpopular categories, people just optimize for Google and get in the real results, not paying for ads.

A CPC deal allows much cheaper rates for unpopular terms (5 cents/click compared to 8-12 cents per impression based upon placement), while allowing competitive categories to be bid up.

However, the click-pop isn't a user-benefit, it's a Google benefit. The old system moved the clicked on ads to the top (where Google charged more, but you got better clickthrough so it was fine). The new system takes into account your CPC bid and click throughs.

That makes sense. If I am willing to pay 10 cents a click but get twice as many clicks as your 15 cent ad, I pay Google more per page, so Google wants to run my ad.

The real system is likely not that simple, because Google's bid-protection automatically down-bids you to be 1 cent above the person below you. Therefore, like on Ebay, you can bid the max that you are willing to pay.

It's an intelligent system. Google is entitled to run ads. Their advertisements are clearly marked as ads and separated from the editorial. The problem with search engine ads isn't that they run ads, or even targetted ads, its that the search engines intentionally try to confuse you as to what you are getting. The other problem is the bait-and-switch strategy. Several meta-searches built up user bases by giving great results with intelligent use of the engines. Once they got users, they switched to completely CPC systems to leverage their userbase until they got fed up and left.

Repeat after me, there is nothing morally wrong with ads. Poorly done ads that slow my connection make me leave your site, but I haven't been robbed. Making money is not morally wrong.

Alex