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It's funny, because if you run AdSense on your website, Google has very strict guidelines about not misleading users and making a clear distinction between adve
by Guest0918231 7y ago
It's funny, because if you run AdSense on your website, Google has very strict guidelines about not misleading users and making a clear distinction between advertisements and your content. However, when Google shows ads on their site, they don't need to follow those rules, they blend them in as closely as possible.
Also, what's the deal with showing an advertisement for the same result that's number one? See the below screenshot.
https://i.imgur.com/f0Kolfv.png https://i.imgur.com/f0Kolfv.png
Doesn't this seem wrong? For a lot of people, Google has become a site to not only search the internet, but to simply navigate it. It's normal for someone wanting to visit Expedia to search "expedia.com" or "expedia". They are trying to navigate to that website, Expedia is the first organic result, and yet Expedia is pressured into paying for an advertisement to prevent one of their competitors from appearing first. Even when a competitor hasn't advertised, they're still stuck paying like the above screenshot. To me, this feels inappropriate. Google is getting a hefty payday by simply redirecting someone searching for "expedia.com" to the Expedia website.
- bufferoverflow 7y agoNotice the first search result URL is different from the ad URL. That probably explains why they display both.
- ftvy 7y ago>what's the deal with showing an advertisement for the same result that's number one? They paid for the ad. They probably leave it up as first organic results because some people think clicking ads is malignant.
- 333c 7y agoThey display both because Google is selling ad space on searches like these, where people search the name of a site. If that site doesn't buy the ad, their competitor will. So sites are being forced to buy ads on their own trademark.
- Guest0918231 7y agoI understand why it's happening and I mentioned it in my comment. However, I just find it incredibly inappropriate that... 1. When I search an exact domain Google will take money from a competitor and show their "advertisement" first. I say that in quotations, because it looks like they're showing a search result, not an advertisement. At this point it feels like companies are paying for their search placement. Pay enough money and you can be the first result for any search term. 2. Does Google give Expedia the option to not pay for an advertisement when there is no competition? I don't think so, and in the example I posted, Google has basically scared Expedia into outbidding no one. The whole thing feels like extortion. Pay us money or we'll send people trying to navigate to your website to one of your competitors.
- 333c 7y agoI 100% agree with you. It is extortion.
- ddingus 7y agoGoogle = the new Yelp
- puranjay 7y agoThat's what happens when MBAs and not engineers run your tech company
- lwansbrough 7y agoThere are enough unethical engineers in the world (in fact, many of them work at Google!) that you don’t need to make this accusatory statement.
- dchichkov 7y agoYour statement has unquantified "enough, "many" and unqualified "in fact". It also completely misses the point - it is the proportion of unethical decision makers that matters. Not the absolute numbers.
- loceng 7y agoA shakedown, not sure how it's been legal for so long.
- toohotatopic 7y agoDoes this create an opportunity for 'number one' sites to band together and create a competing search engine? Would it be possible to fund a search engine startup by selling shares to all of those sites who now have to pay to stay at the top? In the long run, it should be cheaper to fund a competitor.
- lonelappde 7y agoI'm not sure regulators would look kindly on an pan-industry cartel explicitly designed to suppress smaller business from appearing in the marketplace. That's a pure antitrust play.
- Swalden123 7y agoThat sounds like Google to me.
- jackcosgrove 7y agoHERE is an industry consortium created to offer an alternative map service.
- JohnFen 7y agoI'm helping this effort along -- all of my sites specifically exclude Google's spiders, but allow those of other search engines.
- shadow-banned 7y agoThis is the correct answer, not the other answers below. We call it branded search, or brand protection placements. This is the sort of practice that will get Google in trouble with Congress.
- abbadadda 7y agoThis reply reads like a robot wrote it. OP obviously understood all this when making the original comment.
- thatsnotmepls 7y agoDo you have an example where the competitor website shows up first because the searched company hasn't bought the ad? Haven't seen that before.
- moolcool 7y agohttps://twitter.com/dhh/status/1219648204074971136 https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1219648204074971136 https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1218602553862000640 https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1218602553862000640 https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1218595279026319360 https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1218595279026319360
- Waterluvian 7y agoMaybe people who can block that ad wouldn't get any result for Expedia, which would upset Expedia a lot.
- etcher 7y agoGoogle could keep the search result and just hide the ad.
- roozbeh18 7y agoalmost any average PC user I have worked with, do not know where to enter URL and always search the URL.
- lonelappde 7y agoFor most PC users, the URL goes in the same place as the search, so they absolutely know.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Reedx 7y agoThe url they're using for the ad is interesting: www.expedia.com/Expedia/Official_Site To me (which may well be a minority view) that actually makes it feel less official, because "/Expedia/Official_Site" is the sort of tactic a scammer would use. I'd worry about it having the unintended consequence of building people's trust in something like "/Official_Site" vs focusing on the domain name. At the very least it's muddying the waters in this respect.
- rijoja 7y agoHad the exact same thought. Had to double check the domain name twice since it looked so fishy!
- lonelappde 7y agoScammers use the messaging of legit companies, and vice versa, because by assumption consumers can't tell the difference and companies use the most effective messaging they know.
- herpderperator 7y agoAnd that URL results in a 404! Good riddance.
- esotericsean 7y agoI always scroll past the ad to click on the "real" URL. I don't want to add to the statistic showing support that behaviour.
- lonelappde 7y agoYou do you, but (1) you aren't moving anyone's needle on revenue or expenses, and (2) you're using the search engine for its main business proposition and then circumventing the compensation model, so you are not being ethical either. You could use another engine or spend some money to compensate the search provider.
- xp84 7y ago> and then circumventing the compensation model > spend some money to compensate the search provider what? Wait so you're saying everyone owes it to Google to click the ads? How much? Always? Sometimes? Does this mean that if you go to the movies you are literally obligated to buy popcorn and soda? I agree with you that if no one clicked ads then Google wouldn't "be able to operate it" for free. But I think that like any business they operate in the aggregate. Some people make you money, some don't. In Google's case, everyone I have ever watched click ads 100% of the time so I don't think they're hurting. And also, I think if everyone stopped clicking ads and Google was forced to just charge users say $12 a month for search as an informational service with zero ads, I would gladly pay it. And the Internet and the world would be a LOT better.
- tremon 7y agoIndeed. That's why Google is obscuring the boundaries between "ads" and "results", until you no longer have the option to not be a statistic.
- zsgoldberg 7y agoIs it plausible they've created a Church/State style separation between the Ads and Results? Seems like that would be desirable in a lot of cases, though perhaps not in cases when someone is Googling for something with an obvious first result
- skywhopper 7y agoThis amounts to racketeering. Given Google’s power. If you want to find a particular brand name, that brand name has to pay up for the ad space or their competitors will take it, and either way, Google makes money.
- jocro 7y agoFully agreed - and the necessity for the client here can't be overstated: was doing some research into nearby apartment buildings and searching the exact name of the building I was looking for returned an ad with their neighboring competitor as the top result, above the site of the building I was looking for.