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

They don't complain

[sleeponthemic]

When google sends them traffic (for free). Besides, I think that it is unlikely many people will use google to search individual inventories. Maybe I'm naive, but I routinely choose not to search a site with google (if there is an option).

Re:They don't complain

[p0tat03]

I would use this feature. I generally check for stock on a particular item before I head out to the store to pick it up - stores like Future Shop and Best Buy here in Canada are notorious for running out of stock on moderately popular items. These two stores, coincidentally, also have some of the hardest to navigate sites I've ever had to use. Finding a particular product, or even a category of products, is an exercise in randomness and futility.

If someone suffers from Google's new feature, they have only themselves to blame. Why wouldn't I use the site's own search tool if it was any good at all? The fact that I'm clamoring for an alternative is only evidence that they are sucking.

!new

[Jeff321]

The "site:" search has been around nearly as long as Google itself. All Google did was make it easier to use, and now companies are complaining about this "new" tool?

this is a new feature?

[itsdave]

I could do a search with "site:www.bestbuy.com" for years now. wtf you talking about new feature?

Re:exclusions?

[mysidia]

They may use robots.txt exclusion to exclude their site from site search. All they need do is exclude / to remove themselves from the google index.

Or exclude everything except the front page from being crawled.

Of course they won't want to do this, because the resulting drop in pagerank and traffic from search results are much more costly than a few visitors finding ads for a competitor listed in search results.

By the way, if they buy the keywords, _they_ can put up ads that may appear on search-within-site of _their_ competitors too.

I fail to see any duty of a search engine being to protect you against your competition. Search engines may even offer contrary opinions..

Search for "Xyz Shop" -> "Xyz Shop, INC. is only rated 1 out of 5 by visitors. 5 out of 5 visitors like 'ABC Shop, INC. Better', do you want to search for that, instead?"

Until they click the link to choose a search result for _your_ site, they are not your customer, they're not even your prospective customer, their only relationship is with the search engine (as a user), and the pages they are viewing are dynamically generated, sponsored by the search provider, making them completely within the search provider's discretion.

Re:Opt-out

[tedivm]

If they don't want Google to index their publicly available pages, they can use robots.txt. End of story.
Thats ridiculous. Why does this issue need to be so black and white? I see no reason why people shouldn't be able to complain- hell, if I was Google, I would appreciate the complaints. How the hell is a company supposed to improve if everyone just up and leaves before mentioning they have an issue?
In this case, I certainly don't think Google did anything wrong. If someone wanted to search WSJ or NYTimes specifically, they would go to those respective websites. If they go to Google, they're probably looking for options. That doesn't mean it can't be fixed or improved- for instance, Google already has a custom search engine option, and I think it would be really interesting if (using something like Google's webmaster tools) that could be tied into this. It even allows you to plug it into an adsense account to make some money, or prevent direct competitors' ads from showing up.
I obviously got a little off track there, so I'll get back to my main point- the idea that people should just shut up and take whats handed to them, or they should shut themselves off from a large part of the internet (which is basically what they'd be doing), is appallingly naive and just plain useless.