11 ms·

New banner ads push actual Google results to bottom 12% of the screen

271 points by llambda 13y ago

wahsd 13y ago
Well, at least there are 6,352,596,267 results I can sift through. The last search I did, I found my solution in result 4,936,392
scott_karana 13y ago
As far as I'm concerned, the "News" results shown on the bottom 12% aren't quite search results either, though still useful. Everything is below the fold. :(
NicoJuicy 13y ago
I'd seriously consider using the Bing search engine more with my chrome browser just to get in their statistics.. This ain't a big deal actually, it's a test to get more from their Adwords when people really search for the companies. But behold the future :( (investors, stocks, it will never be enough).
ColinWright 13y ago
This seems largely the same as the item submitted just 3 hours ago, still on the front page, and discussed at considerable length: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6605312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6605312 Same story (but no real discussion) was submitted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6604925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6604925 Call me cynical, but I suspect it will still be upvoted and discussed here because any comments on that earlier discussion will get lost in the noise of the close to 200 comments already there.
- larrys 13y ago
  "but I suspect it will still be upvoted and discussed here" Sometimes when there is a story that is a day or so old it's almost as if it doesn't pay to comment for that exact reason. Edit: By "exact reason" I mean an old story with 200 comments isn't as attractive to make a comment on as a new story with 15 or 20 comments that is 2 or 3 hours old.
  - ColinWright 13y ago
    > Sometimes when there is a story that > is a day or so old ... Indeed, but in this case the other submission is just 4 hours old. I had a rant about this in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6606955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6606955 As I say, this rampant duplication (which I admit doesn't happen often, but still often enough) offends my sense of taste. I know others don't care, but it irritates me. And now I'm going to have to step away from the keyboard and let it all die down and go away. At least with on-line irritations like this you can just walk away.
shuw 13y ago
The example they use is navigational query for "Southwest Airlines". As far as I'm concerned, the deep links to South West airlines' site such as "Flight Schedules" are actual search results. Ignoring that, it's unfair to use one example and say that search results are 12%. Is it 12% average, 12% median, or 12% for navigational queries only?
spindritf 13y ago
Someone searching for Southwest Airlines is probably looking for... Southwest Airlines. So the very first result is a useful one. With sections of the official website conveniently linked and a pretty picture on top. This sounds to me like a complete non-issue. If you don't like ads, install AdBlock. Of course if you need clicks for your website, carry on.
- pkfrank 13y ago
  Precisely. If Southwest's banner hit for "cheap airfare" or something similar, this would indeed be outrageous. But this just seems like useful (and sponsored) info being offered without needing to click-through. Somewhat sensationalist.
  - tyree732 13y ago
    Consider an alternate universe where Southwest Airlines has a worse reputation due to a variety of bad practices they've engaged in. These banner ads have the potential for pushing many hits describing these practices further down the page, stifling the ability for organic results to properly reflect public opinion on a company.
    - thrownaway2424 13y ago
      As pointed out below, these images aren't "pushing" anything down anything. They are about the same height as the stuff they replaced. http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2013/10/google-banner-ad-vs-standard-branded-results.jpg http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2013/10/...
      - mindcrime 13y ago
        > As pointed out below, these images aren't "pushing" anything down anything. They are about the same height as the stuff they replaced. Doesn't matter. Users are going to see this, and their mind is going to register "huge fucking banner ad". They aren't going to go find old screenshots, break out a ruler and do pixel by pixel comparisons.
eliben 13y ago
What are "actual results" for Southwest though? To me it seems like links to check-in, flight status, schedules and customer services is exactly what I'd want to see there. Is the image what you find distracting? But doesn't this give you immediate indication that you got into the right place?
- rosser 13y ago
  I think the thing people are objecting to is less the image or its associated links, but that that whole thing is an ad. Yeah, it's probably the most relevant result, but it's giving the user (especially if that user is, you know, non-technical) little choice but to click on the thing that puts money in GOOG's pocket. I can't speak for anyone else, but I find that a little evil.
  - gilbertw1 13y ago
    If google is providing you a free service, and giving you exactly what you want in that first result, why shouldn't they get money for doing it? Seems like a win-win to me. Plus these look more like customized brand pages for companies that people are "specifically looking for", I would rather have detailed information about a company right front and center when I'm looking for it. The fact that anyone makes money because of this fact is ancillary.
  - Goronmon 13y ago
    I can't speak for anyone else, but I find that a little evil. I'm having a hard time not reading this as effectively saying that it's evil to compensated for providing a service. Yeah, it's probably the most relevant result, but it's giving the user (especially if that user is, you know, non-technical) little choice but to click on the thing that puts money in GOOG's pocket. But the user made the choice to use Google in the first place. If people don't want Google getting money for clicks in their search results, then they should use a competing search engine.
    - MadManE 13y ago
      As much as I agree with you, what competing search engine?
dm8 13y ago
Most users don't even care about going to second page of search. With knowledge graph, Google gives you precise answer right away and takes full screen on mobile (nearly half of the screen on desktop). I think Google is optimizing for users rather than SEO/Websites. As a someone who works in advertising, even I dislike banner ads. They are obtrusive, annoying and take away the attention. Google should go back to adwords and make them better rather than anything else.
Mikeb85 13y ago
What did he expect when searching for Southwest Airlines? He got their website and links to flights. I just did a few searches for educational topics, got no ads. ... I would say there isn't a problem...
- mhurron 13y ago
  Well now, at the moment it is just a pilot program (heh) But lets assume it doesn't say that way and someone around here needs to search for something like oh Visual Studio (something or other) Xcode git integration Now imagine the glorious Microsoft or Apple ad covering 88% of the screen. Still don't see the problem? An ad targeted the way this one is isn't useful for anything other than gauging reaction. For it to be useful they will have to show up on related searches, not ones that are specifically for that product or service.
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    Just tried a few searches. 'Visual Studio' brings you to it's product page, as well as MSDN. 'Visual Studio' + an additional search term brings up only 'search' results...
stingrae 13y ago
This doesn't seem to be a very fair comparison. You cant compare a search for "maps" with a search for an actual company in this case "Southwest Airlines." I would expect that a search for a company even earlier in googles history would have been links mainly to southwest owned pages.
acheron 13y ago
I like the image of results from 2005. I had totally forgotten about "Froogle".
- jpadkins 13y ago
  shopping.google.com
ktr100 13y ago
goolge quote: “There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.” http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2005/12/about-aol-announcement.html http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2005/12/about-aol-announcem...
- slouch 13y ago
  Gruber pointed out today that it was Marissa Mayer who said that.
dragonwriter 13y ago
That's misleading, because they are counting the whole result box that is labelled "Sponsored", but of that box, everything but the actual graphic banner at the top of the box is exactly the organic search result which is the top hit for the search (including the subordinate links) served to users that aren't getting the new experimental ads. So, everything but the graphic (not everything but the sponsored box) is "actual Google results".
anon1385 13y ago
Page and Brin themselves once pointed out the problems of accepting ads or paid placement, with some rather ironic examples: Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results. For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine. In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines. However, there will always be money from advertisers who want a customer to switch products, or have something that is genuinely new. But we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm. http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html The main difference seems to be that today even getting the top organic search result doesn't provide enough clicks for advertisers, so they feel obliged to purchase ads for their own brand names even when they already rank first. If people searching for Southwest Airlines on Google aren't ending up on the Southwest Airlines website without a huge great banner ad (despite it being ranked at the top of the results) then something is going badly wrong on the Google search results page.
- killwhitey 13y ago
  The main difference seems to be that today even getting the top organic search result doesn't provide enough clicks for advertisers, so they feel obliged to purchase ads for their own brand names even when they already rank first. It should be noted that this instance is simply a test and should not be taken as an indication of how these ads will be purchased. While I'm sure there will be numerous advertisers who feel the need to have a large banner when their specific brand is searched for, I expect them to be in the minority. The real question is will I be seeing a banner for Southwest when I search for JetBlue.
  - subsystem 13y ago
LeafyGreenbriar 13y ago
I was worried when I saw this headline, and then very relieved when I saw what was actually going on. So long as Google only returns these sponsored ads for searches for the company name, I don't see this as being a problem at all, given the fact that many users are using the address bar integrated search in place of bookmarking or typing URLs. Where this would become a problem is if they start expanding this to searches beyond simply the company name, and I think there is a bit of a gray area there. As someone else pointed out in this thread, showing the Southwest banner in response to a search for "cheap airfare" pretty unambiguously crosses a line, but what abut something like "book southwest airlines flights." One could argue that the user was attempting to get to the southwest airlines website to book a flight, so showing the Southwest banner would be appropriate, however, companies like Expedia, Kayak, and so on, whose links would now be much further down the page, would likely disagree.
- jrockway 13y ago
  I was under the impression that Southwest didn't let third party sites take reservations for them.
  - LeafyGreenbriar 13y ago
    Oh, that might be. I was only trying to make a general point about how ad placement like that could easily go too far, at least in the eyes of some. I actually try to avoid flying Southwest whenever possible just because I hate having to queue up at the gate.
  - lnanek2 13y ago
    You get booked on them through code shares all the time, though, using other major airlines.
    - jrockway 13y ago
      I think you're mistaken. Southwest only codeshares with AirTran, which they own.
pearjuice 13y ago
Easily circumvented by using proper browser plugins.
bsimpson 13y ago
FWIW, I have a Chromebook Pixel and the large Sponsored brand box pushes the search results entirely below the fold on my screen.
aresant 13y ago
There was an interesting earlier this year from EBAY showing that there was ZERO value to buying their own brand keywords from Google (when their organic keywords ranked high). In fact spending money on their own brand keywords generated signifigant negative ROI (1). So my guess is that this strategy from Google is designed to provide brands with a first step to generating actual value from Google search results. I can see brands making these out-sized spends when able to provide their customers w/additional value like interactivity within the goog results, etc. (1) http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/03/did-ebay-just-prove-that-paid/ http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/03/did-ebay-just-prove-that-paid/
- joshuahedlund 13y ago
  Perhaps, but Google has already been claiming[1] that such spending provides positive value (though I have no idea how true that is for whatever brands they're pursuing here) [1] http://searchengineland.com/ebay-says-adwords-ineffective-google-research-contradict-ebay-findings-151573 http://searchengineland.com/ebay-says-adwords-ineffective-go... > On average, 50% of the ad clicks that occurred with a top rank organic result are incremental, i.e., they would not be recovered organically if the ad campaign is paused.
  - robryan 13y ago
    Also it is generally really cheap to buy that ad, so even if the incremental value is small it is still worth it. It also keeps you on top of anyone else bidding on your brand, if you brand is generic enough for them to get away with it.
muraiki 13y ago
Here's the best "malicious" reasoning behind this that I could come up with. Consider the following list of _hypothetical_ statements (as I have no research to back it up): 1. Users tend to ignore the small ads on the right (anecdote: I do) 2. Users do notice and click on search results beneath the top query, even when they originally intended to arrive at their exact branded query 3. Search results beneath the top result are for competitors Solution: Put in huge "ad" to draw attention and also to knock competitors listings to the very bottom of the screen or off the fold completely If 1-3 hold true, then I could see it making sense competitively to shove those other results down the page. Edit: aresant pointed out a good article that could explain the intent. Yay! Also, it wasn't my intent to hate on Google, just a thought experiment.
Theodores 13y ago
If you look at this from a retailer perspective this completely makes sense. Important boss man at 'Acme Widgets' wants to type 'Acme Widgets' into Google and see something impressive, with some control over it. He can now pay for the advert with Google rather than pay a bunch of SEO clowns and 'web designers' that typically go over-clever with the homepage design rendering the top search results useless. Important boss man also wants to get good results for 'acme blue widgets', 'tough widgets Alabama', 'naughty widgets' and whatever but only really cares about those secondary searches when someone else has told him to care about it. It is the main company name, in the search box that matters. I think this is going to work well for all concerned and I don't share the cynicism most people seem to have about this.
elwell 13y ago
I'm sure this makes DuckDuckGo happy.
toddmorey 13y ago
So SWA is a pretty specific example, but what about Apple? What about when you are searching for, well, information about apples? And can SWA ever own the term "Southwest"? When you think it out, it's not as cut and dry as it first seems.
aegiso 13y ago
Whoa, I just had a flash forward to 2030. First, probe the outrage machine for banners for particular brands. Then for a huge price tag, add lightweight widgets to the SERP for brands so searchers can e.g. buy tickets from the Google Search page. This is hailed by the brands as increasing sales dramatically. Demand for this feature grows. Once significant numbers are using the SERP widgets, make the banners/widgets part of general non-brand search. Natural next step. A little bit of outrage, but at this point it just gets muffled by the masses. Life goes on. All of these brands are getting increasingly dependent on Google's SERP widgets, which give Google huge leverage power. One deal leads to another and before you know it Google starts buying up airlnes to streamline everything. So in 2030 we're flying Google Air using a Google phone to buy tickets to the Google Movies, to see a film made by a studio wholly owned by Google. I'm not even saying this is a Bad Thing (tm). Just that if I were heading Google this would totally be my game plan.
- r00fus 13y ago
  At what point does Google step straight into Evil territory? Google will never buy airlines, it'd be like Apple taking over the music industry. Besides, Airlines are a very low-margin business. How would a GOOG investor react to them taking on such a margins-killing subsidiary?
tn13 13y ago
I am not sure why this is a bad thing as such. Google does not owe us to give the search results. Google owes advertisers a good return for their money and they will optimize it in whatever way they can. At least they are not being like Ask or Conduit.
dotcoma 13y ago
They look like Altavista in 2002. Glad I switched to DuckDuckGo three months ago. Adios, Google!
chintan 13y ago
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/southwest-mobile-ad.png http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/southw... Speaking of "high quality ads": The second Cheap-O-Air Ad is for flights to Southwest not on Southwest Airlines - Deceptive IMHO.
andrewhillman 13y ago
I never understood why big companies waste money for keyword campaigns for their own brand, especially since they are going to show up first anyways. These banner ads provide branding opportunities so I understand this move.
ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
I am convinced they have monkeys for designers. WHY on earth would you allow "About 30,2000,000 results (0.25 seconds)" to take up space?! Are these guys insane? That's the most useless information on the page, and it's pushing the ads and search results further down.
- llamataboot 13y ago
  Don't they supposedly use 8 million A/B tests for every little design tweak?
  - ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
    Yes and they're really over-doing it with all the changes. By the time they're done a/b testing 40 different variations of something, they've exposed millions of users to a crappy interface just so they can collect hard evidence that it's crappy when compared to other ui variations. And they do this because we're in a "Post Steve Jobs" era where every designer wants to be a Prima-Dona Jobs-successor Rockstar Diva who re-invisions all the company's products. You'd be surprised at the illogical changes and constant redesigns they make with YouTube and Google Analytics. I'm actually moving away from G-Analytics to Piwki because of the obnoxious "anti-middle-click" interface. With YouTube, Jesus... They change something every week. At least on my account they do.
mildtrepidation 13y ago
I've been criticized more than once by designers for making references to content being "below the fold." Of course there's no actual fold, and yes, it's an old term from the newspaper world. However, it's very clearly still relevant, even if it's not as easily definable: The harder you make it for people to find your content, the less likely they are to view it or continue parsing your message, regardless of what it is.
SCdF 13y ago
This is such a non-issue. They searched for an actual brand name, and they got branded results. If I searched for "how do airplanes work?" and got a massive Southwest Airlines banner this would be something to complain about. Currently though, this is just link bait.
spankalee 13y ago
Disclaimer: I'm a Googler I think this is a pretty disingenuous analysis of what's going on. It's obvious from the comparison to the [Virgin America] search that this is a bigger change that just adding a "banner ad". Notice that for [Virgin America] there are _two_ spots that bring you to virginamerical.com, the ad and the first organic result. This is redundant, wastes space, and probably is confusing to some users. I don't know why a company buys ads for navigational queries where it's already the top result, but they do, and I'd argue it's bad for users. On the [Southwest Airlines] query you can see that there's no redundant ad anymore - the navigational ad and the first organic result are combined. Calling that whole box and ad, when it contains the same content that the former top organic result used to, is misleading, but makes for a much more sensational headline when you want to claim that most of the screen is ads. I'm not sure about the experiment, that's not my area, but my guess that this is part of an attempt to not have this ad+organic confusion for navigational queries by allowing the owner of the first result of a nav query to merge the ad with the result into a professional and official looking box. Maybe that'll work, maybe not, which is most likely why it's an experiment.
- barista 13y ago
  Who cares? The stock is over 1K now!!!
- danso 13y ago
  So if it's illogical for companies to buy ad space on queries for which they are the top result...why would they (presumably) fork over even more money to have an attractive banner ad? If a user is searching explicitly for Southwest Airlines...which seems to be the most conceivable non-sinister scenario to show the SA banner ad...how does it help the company or the user to have the interface suddenly change? Maybe the answer is, "Well, because companies --and their marketing people -- are dumb like that, so, if they want to throw money at us..." Still, seems like it adds more complexity to both the backend logic and the front-end, while at the same time, harming opposing viewpoints. For example, Scientology is the first organic result for a search for "scientology" and thus deserves the opportunity to have a banner ad. And yet the banner ad as presented by the OP would push Scientology's apparently-well-SEOptimized opponents well below the fold. (not to pick on Scientology, it's just the one religion/group example in which its opponents are almost as well known as the organization itself)
mindcrime 13y ago
Wow, that's absolute shit. Horrible, horrible, brain-dead move by Google. It won't happen overnight, but this will inevitably wind up pushing people to seek out a better search engine (read: one that doesn't display huge honkin' banner ads like this) and sooner or later, somebody will come along and offer equal (or better!) search results, nix the banner ad, and eat Google's lunch. Google are so big and powerful that it's easy and tempting to think of them as invulnerable and immortal, but remember... people have thought that about many companies in the past, more than a few of whom are no longer with us. Edit: OK, IF this really is only for brand names and doesn't show up for more general searches ("cheap airline tickets", etc.) then maybe it won't be received so badly. That said, I still believe that, in general, "big honkin' banner ads" are NOT going to be well received on Google search result pages. I guess time will tell.
- walshemj 13y ago
  I do wonder if this suggestion was the straw that broke the camels back and lead Marissa to yahoo.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- radley 13y ago
  I don't think they're doing banner ads. I bet this is the beginning of Google "pages".
indiefan 13y ago
Sad that the user is being lost in these discussions. I get that people are worried about a slippery slope and boundaries, but this is clearly a better user experience for someone who searched for Southwest Airlines. Put yourself in the position of a human being who just performed a search for Southwest Airlines, would you honestly be angry with that result? No, of course not. It's ironic that every time one of these "omg, google is pushing organic search results off the page" posts comes up, it's the general public who's obsessed with dollars, whereas Google seems to be concerned for the user. Google makes a ton of money off of advertising because they know how to provide useful user experience. Which isn't surprising really, they have a lot more vested interest in making sure they provide such an experience than arstechnica do. Sure they want to find ways to align their incentives with the user's incentives, but come on people: think of the people they saved clicking through to www.cheapair.com and www.insanelycheapflights.com
andr3w321 13y ago
Meh, in an ideal world google search results would only result in one search result: the one I am looking for. This seems to go along with what's happening when someone searches "southwest airlines"
Eye_of_Mordor 13y ago
I think you're misunderstanding - Google knows everything about you and only supplies your search result. The second result is something your really don't want and everything else is there to make you think there are other alternatives to what you really wanted, which was the first result.
charlesism 13y ago
"There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage ... Ever." Eight years passed... "There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage ... ever, excepting one large ad at the top of the page." After that it did not seem strange when the pigs who were supervising the work of the farm all carried whips in their trotters.
elango 13y ago
For the past few weeks i have started to click on the paid ads and unable to differentiate them in my Mac. Also Google now makes you pay for your content to appear on top as (low quality content)paid ads occupy your position
kozhevnikov 13y ago
Oh, the irony... http://i.imgur.com/s3ENzDA.png http://i.imgur.com/s3ENzDA.png

271 points by llambda 13y ago

wahsd 13y ago

Well, at least there are 6,352,596,267 results I can sift through. The last search I did, I found my solution in result 4,936,392

scott_karana 13y ago

As far as I'm concerned, the "News" results shown on the bottom 12% aren't quite search results either, though still useful. Everything is below the fold. :(

NicoJuicy 13y ago

I'd seriously consider using the Bing search engine more with my chrome browser just to get in their statistics.. This ain't a big deal actually, it's a test to get more from their Adwords when people really search for the companies. But behold the future :( (investors, stocks, it will never be enough).

ColinWright 13y ago

This seems largely the same as the item submitted just 3 hours ago, still on the front page, and discussed at considerable length: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6605312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6605312 Same story (but no real discussion) was submitted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6604925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6604925 Call me cynical, but I suspect it will still be upvoted and discussed here because any comments on that earlier discussion will get lost in the noise of the close to 200 comments already there.

larrys 13y ago
"but I suspect it will still be upvoted and discussed here" Sometimes when there is a story that is a day or so old it's almost as if it doesn't pay to comment for that exact reason. Edit: By "exact reason" I mean an old story with 200 comments isn't as attractive to make a comment on as a new story with 15 or 20 comments that is 2 or 3 hours old.
- ColinWright 13y ago
  > Sometimes when there is a story that > is a day or so old ... Indeed, but in this case the other submission is just 4 hours old. I had a rant about this in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6606955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6606955 As I say, this rampant duplication (which I admit doesn't happen often, but still often enough) offends my sense of taste. I know others don't care, but it irritates me. And now I'm going to have to step away from the keyboard and let it all die down and go away. At least with on-line irritations like this you can just walk away.

shuw 13y ago

The example they use is navigational query for "Southwest Airlines". As far as I'm concerned, the deep links to South West airlines' site such as "Flight Schedules" are actual search results. Ignoring that, it's unfair to use one example and say that search results are 12%. Is it 12% average, 12% median, or 12% for navigational queries only?

spindritf 13y ago

Someone searching for Southwest Airlines is probably looking for... Southwest Airlines. So the very first result is a useful one. With sections of the official website conveniently linked and a pretty picture on top. This sounds to me like a complete non-issue. If you don't like ads, install AdBlock. Of course if you need clicks for your website, carry on.

pkfrank 13y ago
Precisely. If Southwest's banner hit for "cheap airfare" or something similar, this would indeed be outrageous. But this just seems like useful (and sponsored) info being offered without needing to click-through. Somewhat sensationalist.
- tyree732 13y ago
  Consider an alternate universe where Southwest Airlines has a worse reputation due to a variety of bad practices they've engaged in. These banner ads have the potential for pushing many hits describing these practices further down the page, stifling the ability for organic results to properly reflect public opinion on a company.
  - thrownaway2424 13y ago
    As pointed out below, these images aren't "pushing" anything down anything. They are about the same height as the stuff they replaced. http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2013/10/google-banner-ad-vs-standard-branded-results.jpg http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2013/10/...
    - mindcrime 13y ago
      > As pointed out below, these images aren't "pushing" anything down anything. They are about the same height as the stuff they replaced. Doesn't matter. Users are going to see this, and their mind is going to register "huge fucking banner ad". They aren't going to go find old screenshots, break out a ruler and do pixel by pixel comparisons.

eliben 13y ago

What are "actual results" for Southwest though? To me it seems like links to check-in, flight status, schedules and customer services is exactly what I'd want to see there. Is the image what you find distracting? But doesn't this give you immediate indication that you got into the right place?

rosser 13y ago
I think the thing people are objecting to is less the image or its associated links, but that that whole thing is an ad. Yeah, it's probably the most relevant result, but it's giving the user (especially if that user is, you know, non-technical) little choice but to click on the thing that puts money in GOOG's pocket. I can't speak for anyone else, but I find that a little evil.
- gilbertw1 13y ago
  If google is providing you a free service, and giving you exactly what you want in that first result, why shouldn't they get money for doing it? Seems like a win-win to me. Plus these look more like customized brand pages for companies that people are "specifically looking for", I would rather have detailed information about a company right front and center when I'm looking for it. The fact that anyone makes money because of this fact is ancillary.
- Goronmon 13y ago
  I can't speak for anyone else, but I find that a little evil. I'm having a hard time not reading this as effectively saying that it's evil to compensated for providing a service. Yeah, it's probably the most relevant result, but it's giving the user (especially if that user is, you know, non-technical) little choice but to click on the thing that puts money in GOOG's pocket. But the user made the choice to use Google in the first place. If people don't want Google getting money for clicks in their search results, then they should use a competing search engine.
  - MadManE 13y ago
    As much as I agree with you, what competing search engine?

dm8 13y ago

Most users don't even care about going to second page of search. With knowledge graph, Google gives you precise answer right away and takes full screen on mobile (nearly half of the screen on desktop). I think Google is optimizing for users rather than SEO/Websites. As a someone who works in advertising, even I dislike banner ads. They are obtrusive, annoying and take away the attention. Google should go back to adwords and make them better rather than anything else.

Mikeb85 13y ago

What did he expect when searching for Southwest Airlines? He got their website and links to flights. I just did a few searches for educational topics, got no ads. ... I would say there isn't a problem...

mhurron 13y ago
Well now, at the moment it is just a pilot program (heh) But lets assume it doesn't say that way and someone around here needs to search for something like oh Visual Studio (something or other) Xcode git integration Now imagine the glorious Microsoft or Apple ad covering 88% of the screen. Still don't see the problem? An ad targeted the way this one is isn't useful for anything other than gauging reaction. For it to be useful they will have to show up on related searches, not ones that are specifically for that product or service.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  Just tried a few searches. 'Visual Studio' brings you to it's product page, as well as MSDN. 'Visual Studio' + an additional search term brings up only 'search' results...

stingrae 13y ago

This doesn't seem to be a very fair comparison. You cant compare a search for "maps" with a search for an actual company in this case "Southwest Airlines." I would expect that a search for a company even earlier in googles history would have been links mainly to southwest owned pages.

acheron 13y ago

I like the image of results from 2005. I had totally forgotten about "Froogle".

jpadkins 13y ago
shopping.google.com

ktr100 13y ago

goolge quote: “There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.” http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2005/12/about-aol-announcement.html http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2005/12/about-aol-announcem...

slouch 13y ago
Gruber pointed out today that it was Marissa Mayer who said that.

dragonwriter 13y ago

That's misleading, because they are counting the whole result box that is labelled "Sponsored", but of that box, everything but the actual graphic banner at the top of the box is exactly the organic search result which is the top hit for the search (including the subordinate links) served to users that aren't getting the new experimental ads. So, everything but the graphic (not everything but the sponsored box) is "actual Google results".

anon1385 13y ago

Page and Brin themselves once pointed out the problems of accepting ads or paid placement, with some rather ironic examples: Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results. For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine. In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines. However, there will always be money from advertisers who want a customer to switch products, or have something that is genuinely new. But we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm. http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html The main difference seems to be that today even getting the top organic search result doesn't provide enough clicks for advertisers, so they feel obliged to purchase ads for their own brand names even when they already rank first. If people searching for Southwest Airlines on Google aren't ending up on the Southwest Airlines website without a huge great banner ad (despite it being ranked at the top of the results) then something is going badly wrong on the Google search results page.

killwhitey 13y ago
The main difference seems to be that today even getting the top organic search result doesn't provide enough clicks for advertisers, so they feel obliged to purchase ads for their own brand names even when they already rank first. It should be noted that this instance is simply a test and should not be taken as an indication of how these ads will be purchased. While I'm sure there will be numerous advertisers who feel the need to have a large banner when their specific brand is searched for, I expect them to be in the minority. The real question is will I be seeing a banner for Southwest when I search for JetBlue.
- subsystem 13y ago

LeafyGreenbriar 13y ago

I was worried when I saw this headline, and then very relieved when I saw what was actually going on. So long as Google only returns these sponsored ads for searches for the company name, I don't see this as being a problem at all, given the fact that many users are using the address bar integrated search in place of bookmarking or typing URLs. Where this would become a problem is if they start expanding this to searches beyond simply the company name, and I think there is a bit of a gray area there. As someone else pointed out in this thread, showing the Southwest banner in response to a search for "cheap airfare" pretty unambiguously crosses a line, but what abut something like "book southwest airlines flights." One could argue that the user was attempting to get to the southwest airlines website to book a flight, so showing the Southwest banner would be appropriate, however, companies like Expedia, Kayak, and so on, whose links would now be much further down the page, would likely disagree.

jrockway 13y ago
I was under the impression that Southwest didn't let third party sites take reservations for them.
- LeafyGreenbriar 13y ago
  Oh, that might be. I was only trying to make a general point about how ad placement like that could easily go too far, at least in the eyes of some. I actually try to avoid flying Southwest whenever possible just because I hate having to queue up at the gate.
- lnanek2 13y ago
  You get booked on them through code shares all the time, though, using other major airlines.
  - jrockway 13y ago
    I think you're mistaken. Southwest only codeshares with AirTran, which they own.

pearjuice 13y ago

Easily circumvented by using proper browser plugins.

bsimpson 13y ago

FWIW, I have a Chromebook Pixel and the large Sponsored brand box pushes the search results entirely below the fold on my screen.

aresant 13y ago

There was an interesting earlier this year from EBAY showing that there was ZERO value to buying their own brand keywords from Google (when their organic keywords ranked high). In fact spending money on their own brand keywords generated signifigant negative ROI (1). So my guess is that this strategy from Google is designed to provide brands with a first step to generating actual value from Google search results. I can see brands making these out-sized spends when able to provide their customers w/additional value like interactivity within the goog results, etc. (1) http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/03/did-ebay-just-prove-that-paid/ http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/03/did-ebay-just-prove-that-paid/

joshuahedlund 13y ago
Perhaps, but Google has already been claiming[1] that such spending provides positive value (though I have no idea how true that is for whatever brands they're pursuing here) [1] http://searchengineland.com/ebay-says-adwords-ineffective-google-research-contradict-ebay-findings-151573 http://searchengineland.com/ebay-says-adwords-ineffective-go... > On average, 50% of the ad clicks that occurred with a top rank organic result are incremental, i.e., they would not be recovered organically if the ad campaign is paused.
- robryan 13y ago
  Also it is generally really cheap to buy that ad, so even if the incremental value is small it is still worth it. It also keeps you on top of anyone else bidding on your brand, if you brand is generic enough for them to get away with it.

muraiki 13y ago

Here's the best "malicious" reasoning behind this that I could come up with. Consider the following list of _hypothetical_ statements (as I have no research to back it up): 1. Users tend to ignore the small ads on the right (anecdote: I do) 2. Users do notice and click on search results beneath the top query, even when they originally intended to arrive at their exact branded query 3. Search results beneath the top result are for competitors Solution: Put in huge "ad" to draw attention and also to knock competitors listings to the very bottom of the screen or off the fold completely If 1-3 hold true, then I could see it making sense competitively to shove those other results down the page. Edit: aresant pointed out a good article that could explain the intent. Yay! Also, it wasn't my intent to hate on Google, just a thought experiment.

Theodores 13y ago

If you look at this from a retailer perspective this completely makes sense. Important boss man at 'Acme Widgets' wants to type 'Acme Widgets' into Google and see something impressive, with some control over it. He can now pay for the advert with Google rather than pay a bunch of SEO clowns and 'web designers' that typically go over-clever with the homepage design rendering the top search results useless. Important boss man also wants to get good results for 'acme blue widgets', 'tough widgets Alabama', 'naughty widgets' and whatever but only really cares about those secondary searches when someone else has told him to care about it. It is the main company name, in the search box that matters. I think this is going to work well for all concerned and I don't share the cynicism most people seem to have about this.

elwell 13y ago

I'm sure this makes DuckDuckGo happy.

toddmorey 13y ago

So SWA is a pretty specific example, but what about Apple? What about when you are searching for, well, information about apples? And can SWA ever own the term "Southwest"? When you think it out, it's not as cut and dry as it first seems.

aegiso 13y ago

Whoa, I just had a flash forward to 2030. First, probe the outrage machine for banners for particular brands. Then for a huge price tag, add lightweight widgets to the SERP for brands so searchers can e.g. buy tickets from the Google Search page. This is hailed by the brands as increasing sales dramatically. Demand for this feature grows. Once significant numbers are using the SERP widgets, make the banners/widgets part of general non-brand search. Natural next step. A little bit of outrage, but at this point it just gets muffled by the masses. Life goes on. All of these brands are getting increasingly dependent on Google's SERP widgets, which give Google huge leverage power. One deal leads to another and before you know it Google starts buying up airlnes to streamline everything. So in 2030 we're flying Google Air using a Google phone to buy tickets to the Google Movies, to see a film made by a studio wholly owned by Google. I'm not even saying this is a Bad Thing (tm). Just that if I were heading Google this would totally be my game plan.

r00fus 13y ago
At what point does Google step straight into Evil territory? Google will never buy airlines, it'd be like Apple taking over the music industry. Besides, Airlines are a very low-margin business. How would a GOOG investor react to them taking on such a margins-killing subsidiary?

tn13 13y ago

I am not sure why this is a bad thing as such. Google does not owe us to give the search results. Google owes advertisers a good return for their money and they will optimize it in whatever way they can. At least they are not being like Ask or Conduit.

dotcoma 13y ago

They look like Altavista in 2002. Glad I switched to DuckDuckGo three months ago. Adios, Google!

chintan 13y ago

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/southwest-mobile-ad.png http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/southw... Speaking of "high quality ads": The second Cheap-O-Air Ad is for flights to Southwest not on Southwest Airlines - Deceptive IMHO.

andrewhillman 13y ago

I never understood why big companies waste money for keyword campaigns for their own brand, especially since they are going to show up first anyways. These banner ads provide branding opportunities so I understand this move.

ChrisNorstrom 13y ago

I am convinced they have monkeys for designers. WHY on earth would you allow "About 30,2000,000 results (0.25 seconds)" to take up space?! Are these guys insane? That's the most useless information on the page, and it's pushing the ads and search results further down.

llamataboot 13y ago
Don't they supposedly use 8 million A/B tests for every little design tweak?
- ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
  Yes and they're really over-doing it with all the changes. By the time they're done a/b testing 40 different variations of something, they've exposed millions of users to a crappy interface just so they can collect hard evidence that it's crappy when compared to other ui variations. And they do this because we're in a "Post Steve Jobs" era where every designer wants to be a Prima-Dona Jobs-successor Rockstar Diva who re-invisions all the company's products. You'd be surprised at the illogical changes and constant redesigns they make with YouTube and Google Analytics. I'm actually moving away from G-Analytics to Piwki because of the obnoxious "anti-middle-click" interface. With YouTube, Jesus... They change something every week. At least on my account they do.

mildtrepidation 13y ago

I've been criticized more than once by designers for making references to content being "below the fold." Of course there's no actual fold, and yes, it's an old term from the newspaper world. However, it's very clearly still relevant, even if it's not as easily definable: The harder you make it for people to find your content, the less likely they are to view it or continue parsing your message, regardless of what it is.

SCdF 13y ago

This is such a non-issue. They searched for an actual brand name, and they got branded results. If I searched for "how do airplanes work?" and got a massive Southwest Airlines banner this would be something to complain about. Currently though, this is just link bait.

spankalee 13y ago

Disclaimer: I'm a Googler I think this is a pretty disingenuous analysis of what's going on. It's obvious from the comparison to the [Virgin America] search that this is a bigger change that just adding a "banner ad". Notice that for [Virgin America] there are _two_ spots that bring you to virginamerical.com, the ad and the first organic result. This is redundant, wastes space, and probably is confusing to some users. I don't know why a company buys ads for navigational queries where it's already the top result, but they do, and I'd argue it's bad for users. On the [Southwest Airlines] query you can see that there's no redundant ad anymore - the navigational ad and the first organic result are combined. Calling that whole box and ad, when it contains the same content that the former top organic result used to, is misleading, but makes for a much more sensational headline when you want to claim that most of the screen is ads. I'm not sure about the experiment, that's not my area, but my guess that this is part of an attempt to not have this ad+organic confusion for navigational queries by allowing the owner of the first result of a nav query to merge the ad with the result into a professional and official looking box. Maybe that'll work, maybe not, which is most likely why it's an experiment.

barista 13y ago
Who cares? The stock is over 1K now!!!
danso 13y ago
So if it's illogical for companies to buy ad space on queries for which they are the top result...why would they (presumably) fork over even more money to have an attractive banner ad? If a user is searching explicitly for Southwest Airlines...which seems to be the most conceivable non-sinister scenario to show the SA banner ad...how does it help the company or the user to have the interface suddenly change? Maybe the answer is, "Well, because companies --and their marketing people -- are dumb like that, so, if they want to throw money at us..." Still, seems like it adds more complexity to both the backend logic and the front-end, while at the same time, harming opposing viewpoints. For example, Scientology is the first organic result for a search for "scientology" and thus deserves the opportunity to have a banner ad. And yet the banner ad as presented by the OP would push Scientology's apparently-well-SEOptimized opponents well below the fold. (not to pick on Scientology, it's just the one religion/group example in which its opponents are almost as well known as the organization itself)

mindcrime 13y ago

Wow, that's absolute shit. Horrible, horrible, brain-dead move by Google. It won't happen overnight, but this will inevitably wind up pushing people to seek out a better search engine (read: one that doesn't display huge honkin' banner ads like this) and sooner or later, somebody will come along and offer equal (or better!) search results, nix the banner ad, and eat Google's lunch. Google are so big and powerful that it's easy and tempting to think of them as invulnerable and immortal, but remember... people have thought that about many companies in the past, more than a few of whom are no longer with us. Edit: OK, IF this really is only for brand names and doesn't show up for more general searches ("cheap airline tickets", etc.) then maybe it won't be received so badly. That said, I still believe that, in general, "big honkin' banner ads" are NOT going to be well received on Google search result pages. I guess time will tell.

walshemj 13y ago
I do wonder if this suggestion was the straw that broke the camels back and lead Marissa to yahoo.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

radley 13y ago
I don't think they're doing banner ads. I bet this is the beginning of Google "pages".

indiefan 13y ago

Sad that the user is being lost in these discussions. I get that people are worried about a slippery slope and boundaries, but this is clearly a better user experience for someone who searched for Southwest Airlines. Put yourself in the position of a human being who just performed a search for Southwest Airlines, would you honestly be angry with that result? No, of course not. It's ironic that every time one of these "omg, google is pushing organic search results off the page" posts comes up, it's the general public who's obsessed with dollars, whereas Google seems to be concerned for the user. Google makes a ton of money off of advertising because they know how to provide useful user experience. Which isn't surprising really, they have a lot more vested interest in making sure they provide such an experience than arstechnica do. Sure they want to find ways to align their incentives with the user's incentives, but come on people: think of the people they saved clicking through to www.cheapair.com and www.insanelycheapflights.com

andr3w321 13y ago

Meh, in an ideal world google search results would only result in one search result: the one I am looking for. This seems to go along with what's happening when someone searches "southwest airlines"

Eye_of_Mordor 13y ago

I think you're misunderstanding - Google knows everything about you and only supplies your search result. The second result is something your really don't want and everything else is there to make you think there are other alternatives to what you really wanted, which was the first result.

charlesism 13y ago

"There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage ... Ever." Eight years passed... "There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage ... ever, excepting one large ad at the top of the page." After that it did not seem strange when the pigs who were supervising the work of the farm all carried whips in their trotters.

elango 13y ago

For the past few weeks i have started to click on the paid ads and unable to differentiate them in my Mac. Also Google now makes you pay for your content to appear on top as (low quality content)paid ads occupy your position

kozhevnikov 13y ago

Oh, the irony... http://i.imgur.com/s3ENzDA.png http://i.imgur.com/s3ENzDA.png