A New Tool From Google Worries Brand-Name Sites

Google has quietly introduced a new feature, called search-within-search, that is alarming some big-name Web publishers and retailers. They worry that users will be siphoned away through ad sales to competitors. What Google is doing is offering a secondary search option if the user initially searches explicitly for one of the brand-name destinations that Google has identified, such as "Best Buy." This secondary search lets users refine their query entirely within the pages of the desired site — but using Google's search, not the site's, and showing Google ads on the result pages, quite possibly ads from competitors. "Analysts generally praise the feature as helping users save steps, but for Web publishers and retailers, there are trade-offs... 'Google is showing a level of aggressiveness with this that's just not needed,' said [one Internet consultant]... Take, for instance, a [test where] users of Google searched The Washington Post and were given a secondary search box. Those who typed 'jobs' into that second box saw related results for The Post's employment pages, but the results were bordered by ads for competing employment sites like CareerBuilder or Monster.com. So even though users began the process by stating their intention to reach The Post, Google's ads steered at least some of them to competitors. Similar situations arose when users relied on Google to search nytimes.com."

Comments

I very loudly call BULLSHIT

[zappepcs]

Data is data. If you are like me, you won't be seeing the ads anyway. When I'm searching data, complex searches reveal the best results in most cases. Being able to search within results is a form of complex search and can be specified by the searcher to start with, Google has simply made this easier. If Google is doing something bad, people are welcome to not have their data indexed by Google. Anyone can search your site via Google and present their own ads next to it. Yes Google is the 800 lb search gorilla, but get real here.

No, I do not think Google is beyond doing evil. I just haven't seen them do any yet.

No matter how technology changes what data we see and how we see it someone is going to be inconvenienced. I am sincerely hoping the US government is the next to be inconvenienced by large amounts of publicly available data. If a few website owners get caught in the mix... meh.

Talk to the buggy makers and shoe cobblers, I'm certain that they will have great sympathy for you.

Re:They don't complain

[evilviper]

Ultimately, however, Google depends on quality web sites, because without it, a search engine would be pointless

Search engines were around before there were many (any?) ad-supported web sites.

Google has taken steps to build content libraries, like book search, news, e-mail, earth/maps, YouTube, etc. Caching everything ensures they'll be useful even if there's nothing else but google.

Shopping sites are more than happy to stay online without ads. Maybe instead of a lot of content (already designed to drive ads views) with a few ads on the page, we'll just have lots of product info on a site, with a few pages of a little content. No doubt if you want to make a "Coca Cola is the greatest drink ever" site, Coke would be happy to host it, even in a post-ad-apocalyptic internet.

With sites like Wikipedia, citeseer, Archive.org, government sites, universities, etc., the internet will continue to be quite useful to a great many people, even if all profit on the internet dies a horrible death (which is ludicrous).

Frankly, I think this is all bullshit. If you can't turn a profit if you're forced to fairly compete with competitors and their advertising, you're doing something wrong. Luckily, it'll only take a quick web search on Google (and a peek at the ads) to find another company that will be HAPPY to fill-in when you go away.

Re:They don't complain

[sm62704]

Many businesses are depending entirely on ads and search results

That's THEIR problem, isn't it? I'm really getting sick of these corporations getting bent out of shape because I don't use the internet like they want me to. "Oh noes they is using Google instead of my own shitty internal search!" "Oh noes they be using google instead of clicking on my blinkey shiney ads!" "Ohe noes they uses adblock to avoid my annoying blinkey shiney ads!"

I've gotten to the point that if I see any advertising for a particular company I avoid its wares entirely if possible, and the more annoying and full of lies it is the more I avoid it.

Every day I think I couln't possible be more disgusted with the corporations, and every day they still manage to top the previous day. Their contempt for their customers seems to have no bounds.