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> The shop’s Google listing is how most customers find his restaurant, yet, he said, he has no control over how his business is represented. There is no way for

> The shop’s Google listing is how most customers find his restaurant, yet, he said, he has no control over how his business is represented. There is no way for him to get rid of the ad next to the Google listing. So he wants the free traffic but not to pay for it in any way? Ah, the "i want my cake and to eat it too" argument. A classic

i_am_proteus 7y ago
Does he have a way to pay for the Google advertising such that he has more control of the content?
- dmitrygr 7y ago
  Yes. You can buy ads for your own keywords. Some companies do, to deny their competition the option to. Much like you can buy the billboard outside your office to prevent your competitors from putting up a huge sign saying "i_am_proteus is a bad person, don't do business with him, do it with us: evilcorp7!"
  - wmeredith 7y ago
    This is only sort of true. Keyword bidding is a black box and the highest offer doesn’t always win. There’s all kinds of Google proprietary sauce that happens to determine the winner of the add placement based on factors that determine “ad quality”.
walshemj 7y ago
There is a lot as a business owner you can do with the google business listings and Bings equivalent. There is plenty of shady stuff with spammers in say the locksmith area but not heard of problems with single ton restaurants - yelp reviews are a lot more sketchy IMO
will_brown 7y ago
>There is no way for him to get rid of the ad next to the Google listing. >So he wants the free traffic but not to pay for it in any way? If people are specifically looking for his business he doesn’t want the competitors business to be able to buy an ad that pops up before the user searching for his business. That has nothing to do with wanting free traffic for nothing. This guy has likely already built a website that is optimized for google search, likely uses paid gmail/google apps, probably registered all his info in google maps...that’s a lot of free data entry for google so their product is better and some of those business services are paid. So now that you use their paid services and probably paid for web development/SEO up to Google’s lastest standards, your business comes up #1 on google searches...and they sell an ad before your result. There is no great real world example, but imagine you have a brick and mortar and sign a commercial lease in a shopping center, then the landlord rents signage in front of your sign to a competitor. Of course he’d always be happy to rent you the 2nd signage if you beat your competitors bid.
- ariwilson 7y ago
  What is the lease in this example? I don't think "optimizing your website for SEO" or "using other Google products" is anywhere close to the kind of specific relationship a lease implies.
  - will_brown 7y ago
    You may have missed this: >There is no great real world example, but imagine... Well for each one of Google’s services there are legal agreements between them and the business. Landlords and google may not be exact but in both instances businesses are dependent, and business don’t just pay google/landlords, business improve and bring value to both google/property. In the case of property a restaurant may do a $1M buildout and the landlord will benefit later if he can release to another restaurant who can reuse the buildout. Or maybe your Walmart and an anchor store bringing customer making the rest of the locations more valuable for the landlord. Google benefits through better products: search results, maps, business info (hours, phone, etc...). The signage seems apt, as a business if I invest in the google ecosystem and make their products better it’s at the very least bizarre they would benefit by selling ads for my business name to my competitors. Basically it’s saying as business succeed on google, google is going to make more money advertising your value to competitors.
- Zak 7y ago
  I think a better real-world example would be paying a third-party for a billboard near a competitor's location. Nobody's rights are violated by that. There's no conflict of business interests. That's just competition. I think it's the same with running ads against searches for a competitor; Google does not take payment for search placement nor provide unrelated benefits to paid users of its services.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    There's no conflict of business interests. That's just competition. I think it's the same with running ads against searches for a competitor; Google does not take payment for search placement nor provide unrelated benefits to paid users of its services. This is (now) wrong. Google search-rank ads show up in the search results with only minor indicia that they are ads. This is very different from what Google used to do--keep ads and search results separate with clear visual indications of what content was ads.

i_am_proteus 7y ago

Does he have a way to pay for the Google advertising such that he has more control of the content?

dmitrygr 7y ago
Yes. You can buy ads for your own keywords. Some companies do, to deny their competition the option to. Much like you can buy the billboard outside your office to prevent your competitors from putting up a huge sign saying "i_am_proteus is a bad person, don't do business with him, do it with us: evilcorp7!"
- wmeredith 7y ago
  This is only sort of true. Keyword bidding is a black box and the highest offer doesn’t always win. There’s all kinds of Google proprietary sauce that happens to determine the winner of the add placement based on factors that determine “ad quality”.

walshemj 7y ago

There is a lot as a business owner you can do with the google business listings and Bings equivalent. There is plenty of shady stuff with spammers in say the locksmith area but not heard of problems with single ton restaurants - yelp reviews are a lot more sketchy IMO

will_brown 7y ago

>There is no way for him to get rid of the ad next to the Google listing. >So he wants the free traffic but not to pay for it in any way? If people are specifically looking for his business he doesn’t want the competitors business to be able to buy an ad that pops up before the user searching for his business. That has nothing to do with wanting free traffic for nothing. This guy has likely already built a website that is optimized for google search, likely uses paid gmail/google apps, probably registered all his info in google maps...that’s a lot of free data entry for google so their product is better and some of those business services are paid. So now that you use their paid services and probably paid for web development/SEO up to Google’s lastest standards, your business comes up #1 on google searches...and they sell an ad before your result. There is no great real world example, but imagine you have a brick and mortar and sign a commercial lease in a shopping center, then the landlord rents signage in front of your sign to a competitor. Of course he’d always be happy to rent you the 2nd signage if you beat your competitors bid.

ariwilson 7y ago
What is the lease in this example? I don't think "optimizing your website for SEO" or "using other Google products" is anywhere close to the kind of specific relationship a lease implies.
- will_brown 7y ago
  You may have missed this: >There is no great real world example, but imagine... Well for each one of Google’s services there are legal agreements between them and the business. Landlords and google may not be exact but in both instances businesses are dependent, and business don’t just pay google/landlords, business improve and bring value to both google/property. In the case of property a restaurant may do a $1M buildout and the landlord will benefit later if he can release to another restaurant who can reuse the buildout. Or maybe your Walmart and an anchor store bringing customer making the rest of the locations more valuable for the landlord. Google benefits through better products: search results, maps, business info (hours, phone, etc...). The signage seems apt, as a business if I invest in the google ecosystem and make their products better it’s at the very least bizarre they would benefit by selling ads for my business name to my competitors. Basically it’s saying as business succeed on google, google is going to make more money advertising your value to competitors.
Zak 7y ago
I think a better real-world example would be paying a third-party for a billboard near a competitor's location. Nobody's rights are violated by that. There's no conflict of business interests. That's just competition. I think it's the same with running ads against searches for a competitor; Google does not take payment for search placement nor provide unrelated benefits to paid users of its services.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  There's no conflict of business interests. That's just competition. I think it's the same with running ads against searches for a competitor; Google does not take payment for search placement nor provide unrelated benefits to paid users of its services. This is (now) wrong. Google search-rank ads show up in the search results with only minor indicia that they are ads. This is very different from what Google used to do--keep ads and search results separate with clear visual indications of what content was ads.