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"I think we need to make a distinction between two different kinds of searches - informational and commercial," he said. "If you search ‘cancer,’ that’s an info

by credo 16y ago

"I think we need to make a distinction between two different kinds of searches - informational and commercial," he said. "If you search ‘cancer,’ that’s an informational search and on those, Google is amazing. But in commercial searches, Google’s results are really polluted. My own personal experience says that the guy with the biggest S.E.O. budget always ranks the highest."

gojomo 16y ago
Perhaps, for predominantly commercial searches, the old 'goto.com' (which became Overture) had it right: top results should be blatantly (and honestly) paid-for. Google could implement this by showing more paid results for commercially-motivated searches – while allowing users to dial this back down if desired. (They do this a little with the varying number of AdWords units above natural results.) Pretending the top results are not going to the largest budget, simply because they're the result of massive investment in gray SEO rather than direct payments to Google, is in some ways the worst approach. It enriches some shady operators, and has negative externalities polluting the rest of the web. At one point years ago someone – I think it was Yahoo – experimented with a slider atop results that let you bias your results in a more- or less-commercially-oriented direction. It might be time to try similar experiments again, with a new UI and the now-more-sophisticated searchers of today.
- byrneseyeview 16y ago
  Google has every economic incentive to prevent paid SEO strategies from working. Google sells placement on the results page--that is their whole business. Gray- and Black-hat SEO is the only serious competitor; money Google takes away from those operators will go straight into Adwords.
  - gojomo 16y ago
    At a surface, conscious level, you're right. Google wants any tolls paid to appear in their results to be paid to them. But considering the whole competitive ecosystem, and indirect effects over time, nasty SEO can help make Google money. Consider these mechanisms: • when the natural results get polluted, the vetted AdWords placements become relatively more attractive to clickers and advertisers. • Google' self-image requires they reserve some ostensibly 'non-paid' slots on the front-page. If in practice these all still have a high cash cost, even though paid to third parties, then everyone needs to open their wallets, rather than just do pure-of-heart helpful info-design, to appear on the front-page. That is, amounts paid to third parties serve as a short of shadow bid, placing a rising floor on the value of AdWords placements. • SEO tactics that mildly or temporarily fool Google, but that Google then overcomes, provide a dynamic, ever-growing barrier-to-entry to other later-entrant search engines. Competitors don't have to do as well on the same web Google first mastered; they have to do as well on the web mutated by Google's economic incentives and iterated cat-and-mouse game.
- greyman 16y ago
  > Perhaps, for predominantly commercial searches, the old 'goto.com' (which became Overture) had it right: top results should be blatantly (and honestly) paid-for. But that is more or less the case now - the top commercial results are paid for (you need to pay for SEO). If you will pay Google directly for that, who would use Adwords then?
- nostrademons 16y ago
  Google does this already - compare [flowers] with [ipad] with [ghc syntax]: http://www.google.com/search?q=flowers http://www.google.com/search?q=flowers http://www.google.com/search?q=ipad http://www.google.com/search?q=ipad http://www.google.com/search?q=ghc+syntax http://www.google.com/search?q=ghc+syntax There used to be "More/fewer shopping results" in the left nav as well, but these seem to have been unlaunched.
  - gojomo 16y ago
    Thanks for the examples; I did mention the varying number of top AdWords units as a small step in this direction. I'm suggesting the best defense against SEO pollution might be to take this even further.
  - storborg 16y ago
    That's not Google's doing, that's just representative of the adwords inventory. Obviously, there is no advertiser anywhere who's going to pay for the keyword "ghc syntax".

by credo 16y ago

gojomo 16y ago

Perhaps, for predominantly commercial searches, the old 'goto.com' (which became Overture) had it right: top results should be blatantly (and honestly) paid-for. Google could implement this by showing more paid results for commercially-motivated searches – while allowing users to dial this back down if desired. (They do this a little with the varying number of AdWords units above natural results.) Pretending the top results are not going to the largest budget, simply because they're the result of massive investment in gray SEO rather than direct payments to Google, is in some ways the worst approach. It enriches some shady operators, and has negative externalities polluting the rest of the web. At one point years ago someone – I think it was Yahoo – experimented with a slider atop results that let you bias your results in a more- or less-commercially-oriented direction. It might be time to try similar experiments again, with a new UI and the now-more-sophisticated searchers of today.

byrneseyeview 16y ago
Google has every economic incentive to prevent paid SEO strategies from working. Google sells placement on the results page--that is their whole business. Gray- and Black-hat SEO is the only serious competitor; money Google takes away from those operators will go straight into Adwords.
- gojomo 16y ago
  At a surface, conscious level, you're right. Google wants any tolls paid to appear in their results to be paid to them. But considering the whole competitive ecosystem, and indirect effects over time, nasty SEO can help make Google money. Consider these mechanisms: • when the natural results get polluted, the vetted AdWords placements become relatively more attractive to clickers and advertisers. • Google' self-image requires they reserve some ostensibly 'non-paid' slots on the front-page. If in practice these all still have a high cash cost, even though paid to third parties, then everyone needs to open their wallets, rather than just do pure-of-heart helpful info-design, to appear on the front-page. That is, amounts paid to third parties serve as a short of shadow bid, placing a rising floor on the value of AdWords placements. • SEO tactics that mildly or temporarily fool Google, but that Google then overcomes, provide a dynamic, ever-growing barrier-to-entry to other later-entrant search engines. Competitors don't have to do as well on the same web Google first mastered; they have to do as well on the web mutated by Google's economic incentives and iterated cat-and-mouse game.
greyman 16y ago
> Perhaps, for predominantly commercial searches, the old 'goto.com' (which became Overture) had it right: top results should be blatantly (and honestly) paid-for. But that is more or less the case now - the top commercial results are paid for (you need to pay for SEO). If you will pay Google directly for that, who would use Adwords then?
nostrademons 16y ago
Google does this already - compare [flowers] with [ipad] with [ghc syntax]: http://www.google.com/search?q=flowers http://www.google.com/search?q=flowers http://www.google.com/search?q=ipad http://www.google.com/search?q=ipad http://www.google.com/search?q=ghc+syntax http://www.google.com/search?q=ghc+syntax There used to be "More/fewer shopping results" in the left nav as well, but these seem to have been unlaunched.
- gojomo 16y ago
  Thanks for the examples; I did mention the varying number of top AdWords units as a small step in this direction. I'm suggesting the best defense against SEO pollution might be to take this even further.
- storborg 16y ago
  That's not Google's doing, that's just representative of the adwords inventory. Obviously, there is no advertiser anywhere who's going to pay for the keyword "ghc syntax".