In this age of information, I believe in what ethical, "user preference" driven search engines can do to improve everybody's life. Google has been my #1 favorite search engine for quite some time. So I am not condemning them in this post, but I would like to convict them in a positive way about their recent decision to go to three sponsored links for "highly commercial query" search results on the top of the SERP.
Back on 4/26/04, Gary Ruskin of Ralph Nader's Commercial Alert wrote an article entitled "A 'Death Spiral of Disrespect'; If the Consumer is Really King, Why Do Marketers Keep Bombarding Him?" He mostly referred to the off line advertising industry when he said "Polls show rising resentment of the industry and its aggressive tactics. According to a new Yankelovich Partners poll, 65% of Americans say they are ''constantly bombarded with too much'' advertising; 61% think the quantity of advertising and marketing they are exposed to ''is out of control''; 60% report that their view of advertising is ''much more negative than just a few years ago.''
Surely, you think, online advertising on search engines is a totally different situation. These are little text ads and sponsored listings. The founders of Google in their IPO "Letter From the Founders 'An Owner's Manual' For Google's Shareholders" even said "Advertising is our principal source of revenue, and the ads we provide are relevant and useful rather than intrusive and annoying." Even though "intrusive and annoying" are subjective issues, I agree. But, I am concerned that the quantity of these paid listings and ads on the limited "real estate" 1st SERP is not "out of control", but going in the wrong direction (more vs. less). The truth is that the other major search engines have three or more sponsored listings at the top, and some have additional paid advertising at the bottom, in some cases.
Google used to stand out above the crowd by emphasizing, more than its competitors, the non-paid "organic" listing results. Now, in a recent article by Kevin Lee on ClickZ entitled "And Then There Were Three: Google Ad Display Increases" it says "Google spokesperson Michael Mayzel confirmed a change was made to the sponsored links area of the SERP (define), particularly when PPC results are highly relevant. Google clearly feels the user experience is positively affected by the change. It will also generate significantly more revenue for Google and deliver more clicks to marketers."
Will the user experience be positively affected by the change? If the PPC sponsored listings are, in fact, relevant (who measures, and how do you measure relevancy?), then yes it will. But, in a 9/14/04 Search Engine Watch article by Heather Lloyd-Martin entitled Delving Deep Inside the Searcher's Mind she referred to an "'iProspect Search Engine User Attitudes Report,' surveying 1,649 participants on their search engine behavior. Specific results are:
- 60.5 percent of respondents picked a natural search result as the one they found most relevant to a sample query.
- 60.8 percent of respondents who use Yahoo! picked a natural search result as "most relevant" to a sample query.
- 72.3 percent of respondents who use Google picked a natural search result as "most relevant."
- 15.2 percent more women than men stop at the first page of search results."
Now, until the search engines take up Danny Sullivan's challenge to them in his recent article Screw Size! I Dare Google & Yahoo To Report On Relevancy, I don't understand how the user-customer can be "king", when 72.3% of respondents who use Google picked non-paid, natural/organic search results as the "most relevant"? More of the prime real estate location has now been given to paid listings! Research from a study funded and carried out by search marketing firms Enquiro, and Did-it, and eye tracking firm, Eyetools shows where that prime real estate is on the 1st SERP.
By the way, I like Danny Sullivan's challenge: "Ideally, I want to see the major search engines come together to develop a unified, accepted way to measure relevancy in various ways: web search, local search, advanced queries, whatever. Establish a research center, a consortium or something and a methodology that all will agree upon. Then test every four to six months and pledge you'll accept the results publicly. Someone wins? Kudos all around! Didn't win? Then do better next time."
Yankelovich Partners have a new book out entitled "Concurrence Marketing". Their description says: "Clutter is minimized by being precise and relevant. Value is delivered by giving consumers power and reciprocity. These two pairs of P's and R's - P&R² - are the four key principles of Concurrence Marketing. Both senses of concurrence are entailed - being in agreement by being more precise and relevant and being collaborative by providing power and reciprocity." In my opinion, all the search engines could learn from this by keeping the text ads and sponsored listings from getting too intrusive into prime SERP real estate, and by accepting Danny Sullivan's challenge.
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