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This is a Good Thing. Competitors with more money are going to do everything they can to get their product info in front of curious eyeballs. You want them to d

by Zanni 7y ago

This is a Good Thing. Competitors with more money are going to do everything they can to get their product info in front of curious eyeballs. You want them to do it via obvious paid advertising rather than black hat SEO. And contrary to Jason Fried, I think the ads are well differentiated, and it's easy to skim past them to the first organic search result. Though you could argue that there are too many of them. Two or three seems more reasonable than four, which pushes the organic results pretty low on the page.

tekstar 7y ago
You are Plain Wrong. It's a terrible thing. Due to the risks inherent to black hat SEO (delisting), serious non-shady companies wouldn't use it to compete on a competitor keyword. This isn't 2011. Companies that are going to use black hat SEO are still going to use black hat SEO, they aren't going to switch to the ad marketplace. Take a second and consider who these ads benefit. Having to compete in paid listings on your own trademark benefits Google, firstly. Secondly, I guess it benefits deep-pocketed competitors who can position themselves above the top organic result. It absolutely does NOT benefit users, and it is an outright tax on the company owning the trademark (who users are obviously attempting to reach via Google). It is a Bad Thing. Unless you're Google.
fasicle 7y ago
"it's easy to skim past them to the first organic search result" From my experience, so few people actually do this. When I watch friends or family use Google, they almost always click on the first or second result without thinking that it is probably an ad.
- dhagz 7y ago
  It really is an amazing example of a healthy pattern becoming dark after awhile. Google spent years establishing themselves as the best search engine, to the point where you would want to click on the first result. Then, they slowly start adding ads, but the ads look like ads and people can easily ignore them. Until one day, someone at Google realizes that if the ads looked more like actual search results more people would click on them - meaning Google could make more money.

by Zanni 7y ago

tekstar 7y ago

You are Plain Wrong. It's a terrible thing. Due to the risks inherent to black hat SEO (delisting), serious non-shady companies wouldn't use it to compete on a competitor keyword. This isn't 2011. Companies that are going to use black hat SEO are still going to use black hat SEO, they aren't going to switch to the ad marketplace. Take a second and consider who these ads benefit. Having to compete in paid listings on your own trademark benefits Google, firstly. Secondly, I guess it benefits deep-pocketed competitors who can position themselves above the top organic result. It absolutely does NOT benefit users, and it is an outright tax on the company owning the trademark (who users are obviously attempting to reach via Google). It is a Bad Thing. Unless you're Google.

fasicle 7y ago

"it's easy to skim past them to the first organic search result" From my experience, so few people actually do this. When I watch friends or family use Google, they almost always click on the first or second result without thinking that it is probably an ad.

dhagz 7y ago
It really is an amazing example of a healthy pattern becoming dark after awhile. Google spent years establishing themselves as the best search engine, to the point where you would want to click on the first result. Then, they slowly start adding ads, but the ads look like ads and people can easily ignore them. Until one day, someone at Google realizes that if the ads looked more like actual search results more people would click on them - meaning Google could make more money.