
New banner ads push actual Google results to bottom 12% of the screen - llambda
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/10/new-banner-ads-push-actual-google-results-to-bottom-12-of-the-screen/
======
anon1385
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
_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.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This may be fallout from trademark owners losing their various lawsuits
against Google for allowing competitors to advertise on their trademark as
keyword. (See this article:
[http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2013/05/google_crushes....](http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2013/05/google_crushes.htm))
So now they may be the top organic result (or even a navigation result) but
JetBlue or United or whatever can buy a banner on top that has their airline
telling the searcher how much better they are than the other guys. This is
great for Google, now Southwest _has_ to pay to advertise or get side swiped
by a competitor, and because its an auction system their competitor can bid up
the keywords to negatively impact Southwest, forcing higher ad rates. Win win
win for Google, not so great for Southwest Airlines).

~~~
ryanhuff
If they follow through with what you suggest, I wonder if it will be the straw
that breaks the camels back in regards to an antitrust lawsuit by the
government.

~~~
r0h1n
Why should that be the case? Google had defended and won most cases around the
world where brands accused it of allowing competitors to show ads against
their keyword searches. Why should banner ads be treated any differently by
antitrust regulators?

~~~
ryanhuff
The issue that I see (IANAL) is that these incremental changes to embedded
advertising within search encroach ever-closer to a form of paid-search. When
you own 60-70% of search, and you start requiring companies to pay in order to
appear above the fold, we may have a problem.

------
spankalee
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.

~~~
nl
Oh wow..

From my point of view the point here is the "Chinese Wall"[1] that used to
exist between organic results and paid advertising.

That used to be clearly defined, and the trust that came from that was one of
Google's strengths.

The way the "Sponsored" result hides the organic result for [Southwest
Airlines] (by scrolling it off the page) makes that wall redundant -
effectively Google is being paid for any click there. Or that's what I _think_
anyway: your comment "the navigational ad and the first organic result are
combined" makes me think that Google is actually combining paid and organic
results without labelling them separately at all. In that case the "Chinese
Wall" is gone completely.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall)

~~~
kbenson
To me, it just looks like southwest paid money to put a picture on top of the
(awesome, IMO) google provided first result and deep links into relevant
sections of the first result site.

I'm always pleasantly surprised when I search for a site and get nav links
into it's main sections, because it's invariably _much easier to navigate than
the site 's own navigational system_. I have no problem letting Google sell a
little extra space above this nav section, especially since it only seems to
appear when the result returned are related predominantly that that first
site. I.e. Google doesn't appear to be doing this for the search "airlines",
but does as soon as the search is definitive enough to identity a specific
airline.

------
spindritf
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.

~~~
thetrb
But if you're searching for Southwest Airlines then why do you want to get an
ad for Southwest Airlines instead of just a neutral link to their homepage?

I understand ads for terms like "cheap tickets", but why would I want an ad
for the term "Southwest Airlines"?

~~~
larrys
"why do you want to get an ad for Southwest Airlines"

From what the example shows it's not so much an ad as a really quick way to
visually see that when you click you will be going to the right place.[1]

I mean visually it's probably quicker to see the big honking ad and airplane
and focus and click than it is to read type. I'm guessing. User testing would
prove or disprove this. (After all why do people use icons for that matter?)

[1] If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

~~~
thetrb
Yes, for the user it's probably easier this way. However, I find it a bit
weird that Southwest is paying Google to display this banner. If it's just an
enhancement for the user shouldn't that be offered by Google itself?

I'm just a bit concerned that we're moving more and more to the point where
your business can only be successful if you're paying Google. I'm not sure if
it's fair to say that and I understand that Google is a business that has to
earn money, but there are some red flags showing up for me.

~~~
thrownaway2424
Look at southwest's front page and then look at Google presentation of their
site map. Their own site is such a train wreck that I wouldn't be surprised to
find out that conversion is superior if the user starts at Google instead of
their own site.

------
aresant
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
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-
go...](http://searchengineland.com/ebay-says-adwords-ineffective-google-
research-contradict-ebay-findings-151573) > 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
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.

------
ColinWright
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
"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

      > 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.

------
eliben
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
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.

~~~
Goronmon
_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
As much as I agree with you, what competing search engine?

------
Theodores
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.

------
LeafyGreenbriar
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
I was under the impression that Southwest didn't let third party sites take
reservations for them.

~~~
lnanek2
You get booked on them through code shares all the time, though, using other
major airlines.

~~~
jrockway
I think you're mistaken. Southwest only codeshares with AirTran, which they
own.

------
muraiki
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.

------
scott_karana
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. :(

------
aegiso
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
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?

------
shuw
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?

------
wahsd
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

------
indiefan
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

------
mindcrime
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
I do wonder if this suggestion was the straw that broke the camels back and
lead Marissa to yahoo.

------
ktr100
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-
announcem...](http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2005/12/about-aol-
announcement.html)

~~~
slouch
Gruber pointed out today that it was Marissa Mayer who said that.

------
Mikeb85
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
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
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
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.

------
toddmorey
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.

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

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

------
Eye_of_Mordor
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.

------
elwell
I'm sure this makes DuckDuckGo happy.

------
dragonwriter
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".

------
dm8
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.

------
mildtrepidation
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.

------
chintan
[http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2013/10/southw...](http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2013/10/southwest-mobile-ad.png)

Speaking of "high quality ads": The second Cheap-O-Air Ad is for flights _to_
Southwest not _on_ Southwest Airlines - Deceptive IMHO.

------
NicoJuicy
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).

------
charlesism
"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.

------
ChrisNorstrom
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
Don't they supposedly use 8 million A/B tests for every little design tweak?

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
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.

------
SCdF
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.

------
tn13
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.

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

~~~
jpadkins
shopping.google.com

------
elango
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

------
andrewhillman
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.

------
andr3w321
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"

------
kozhevnikov
Oh, the irony...
[http://i.imgur.com/s3ENzDA.png](http://i.imgur.com/s3ENzDA.png)

------
pearjuice
Easily circumvented by using proper browser plugins.

