New Google Site Search - Hijacks Publisher Revenue and Traffic?
Google rolled out or is testing a new feature that has many large brands and large publishers like the New York Times, very concerned. If they continue to roll this feature out to smaller sites and brands it’s going to affect lots of affiliates and Adsense publishers. I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone in the affiliate marketing community talk about this yet. Lots of people in the SEO community are up in arms about it.
Rather than explain, let me show you an example below. Then the following articles can explain it in greater detail than I have time to right now.
Joe surfer searches Google looking for “Trip Advisor” a popular travel site. (Click that link and open in new window) You’ll see a new feature - a SITE SEARCH BUTTON under the Trip Advisor listing. (If by chance it’s not showing in your serps yet, here’s a screenshot.) Cool, Joe thinks, I can stay right on Google and search for what I’m looking for. He types “Disneyland hotels” in the Google SITE search box and this is what he gets!
Check that results page. There are a bunch Trip Advisor’s pages (their content), which Google is monetizing with a TON of Adwords ads on the side that are from competing travel sites! If the Joe clicks one of those ads, Google makes money, but TA will lose that visitor and the revenue they could potentially bring.
NORMALLY, prior to this new site search box, the surfer would have clicked the Trip Advisor home page link, gone to the Trip Advisor site and then searched for “Disneyland hotels” right on the destination site they were trying to get to in 1st place. Here’s the TA results page Joe would see if he would have conducted the search on teh destination site. TA gets the opportunity to show THEIR sponsored links section and their advertiser’s banners ads and they will profit if he clicks!
If Joe stays on Google and does the site search not only is TA not getting the potential click, they aren’t getting the chance to show their ads and sponsored links, plus they risk losing the visitor to a competitor, even though Joe typed their name and was trying to get to them. “Google will display ads for competing sites, thereby profiting from ads it sells AGAINST the brand. The feature also keeps users searching on Google pages and not pages of the destination Web site.”
Some HUGE brands and media sites are in an uproar about this. Here are some good articles that explain the problem in more detail.
Information Week: Google Search Within Search Box Hurts Affiliates, Says IDC - “Follow-up searches without leaving Google.com means any ad revenue generated by this second search goes to Google and not to site owners, particularly publishers.
Hijacking Affiliate Revenue: Google’s New Search Within Search Tool (Registration required)
New York Times: A New Tool From Google Alarms Sites
Larry, our 5 Star Forum Administrator added some important points from the article above, that I didn’t have time to go into. Catch it here.
#1 Eric Nagel wrote on Thursday, March 27th, 2008:
“I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone in the affiliate marketing community talk about this yet”
Shane over at RevenueAddict blogged about this 3 weeks ago.
Website owners can opt out of this feature, and I’m sure many will be.
#2 Linda Buquet wrote on Thursday, March 27th, 2008:
Hi Eric,
I thought I had almost every major affiliate marketing blog in my feedreader and I had not seen it mentioned on any of those.
I’d never heard of the UK blog, Revenue Addict before. I’ll head over there and read it now. Good to know. Thanks for the heads up!
#3 NewSunSEO wrote on Thursday, March 27th, 2008:
Hello, this is a very good write-up and thanks for bringing it to my attention. I would like to thank Eric as well for posting the other links as I found that blog to be very interesting. I have bookmarked both blogs and will be back to check for updates regularly.
#4 Guido, A Wealthy Affiliate Member wrote on Thursday, March 27th, 2008:
It is for us affiliate marketers already a long time a fact that any form of advertising like Adsense, or other tools who can lead a visitor away from a Website, can’t or shouldn’t be used if the page focus on ’sales’.
This is most probably the reason why this fact has not jet been discussed in Affiliate Forums and less important for Affiliate Marketers then as for SEO guy’s.
On the other hand we all do have as well Websites which are made for natural listings and who have Adsense and the Google search tool on it. There we will face the same problem as authority sites such as the New York Times etc. , even if our site is not near as big.
So once again the question : what is the goal from big G. with this ?
Here, in this particular situation, I just can see one reason - new, additional Adwords revenue for Google as it is as well for Google more difficult to increase revenue, or to keep it up due to losses from fewer users.
It’s just very sad that Google sees the users of the search tool as their main customer, and all others who actually pay the bill, are getting more and more devalued.
Perhaps this opens space for a “NEW Google” in the future, who knows.
Before the Google area we all though that nothing can be better then Yahoo and MSN. But perhaps something can be better then all the 3 together !?
Success to all
Guido Mueller