

Excuse Me, But Where Did Google's Organic Search Results Go? - stakent
http://www.seobook.com/excuse-me-where-did-googles-organic-search-results-go

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Elepsis
I'm sorry, but this is a bunch of SEO guys whining about the fact that their
dubiously useful sites they spent lots of time trying to move up Google's
ranking are no longer at the top of the page.

When most people search for "san francisco dentists," why _wouldn't_ they want
locations and phone numbers of some of these dentists presented right upfront?
This is no different than what Bing, Yahoo and even Duck Duck Go are doing,
and there's nothing wrong with making the result page more useful for people
without them having to click away.

Sure, Google has been getting a little too spammy with the amount of ads in
the yellow box, but complaining when they surface Youtube videos or maps is
ridiculous. Nine times out of 10, that's exactly what the user is looking for.

~~~
lawrence
I didn't see much whining in here.

Aaron is pointing out that there might be big changes coming to far and away
the biggest source of referral traffic on the web.

I probably don't have to spell this out for you, but it's a big deal if Google
shifts focus from driving traffic to other sites, to driving traffic to its
own sites.

~~~
dspeyer
All the links on the right of the map go straight to the remote sites in
question. That's still where Google is driving the traffic.

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sireat
That particular example was hilariously sad. Almost reminded me of late 90s.

Good news is, if Google gets too aggressive with their ads, Bing(or someone
else) will be happy to take over.

Incidentally, I do not get the same polluted results Aaron got, when using
simple search from Firefox. I just get Google Map thing, single side Adword on
the side and the rest are organic results. Most likely reason is that I am too
far from San Francisco right now...

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BenS
Personally, when I do a local search query, seeing short listings on a map
with ratings and a phone number is pretty much exactly what I was looking for
even though it doesn't meet the author's definition of 'organic'.

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seldo
A map with ratings and a phone number _is_ exactly what I want; unfortunately
I'm also getting two full-bar text ads and another 4 pay-for-placement local
search ads before I get to that. Combined they take up nearly 800 pixels of
vertical space, a user experience so terrible and un-Googley that I have to
assume it's an error.

 _Update:_ seconds after posting this, I refreshed and the full-bar ads went
away. Have they just fixed the results?

~~~
endtime
I don't think so. It looks like subsequent refreshes of the same query lower
the number of sponsored links shown. I searched for "San Francisco dentists"
(I'm in the Bay Area) and I got exactly what was shown in the article.
Refreshed a few times, and the number of sponsored links shown was decremented
by one each time until, until it got down to just the four small 2x2 ads.

Got the same behavior searching "Palo Alto dentists", though the number of
sponsored links started lower.

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JshWright
From the article: "Update: it looks like Google claimed the phone number
removal was a bug, but weird timing that the bug appeared at the same time
they started selling premium local ads that appear on the regular search
results."

Why is it weird timing that a bug would appear when a system is being
modified? Isn't that pretty much when most bugs are introduced?

~~~
psranga
Umm, don't you think they have a regression test that checks if everything
that's supposed to be displayed in a search result is actually displayed?

Seems like they're stretching the definition of bug here. Maybe a bug in the
specification, almost certainly not in the code.

~~~
JshWright
A fair point... I still think it's more likely for stuff to break when you're
tinkering it with than when you're not.

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TFrancis
Wow, AdBlock makes Google better. I didn't know this was going on.

~~~
Periodic
This has been a trend for me. I've even moved away from using AdBlock, but I
still use NoScript, and it's still amazing.

It often surprises me how different some websites look on other people's
computers. It makes me realize that advertising really does change the user
experience, especially when they're the animated flash ads. A nice, relaxing
read suddenly becomes flashy, distracting, and obnoxious.

~~~
messel
That's gold for someone who wants to develop opt in/non intrusive ads. Thanks
Periodic, I felt the same way but building ads that are "desirable" to the
user experience is a challenge.

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niyazpk
I think even if you get the organic results, they are not organic enough.

I searched for "django video tutorial" earlier today. The first organic
result? A link to the official django docs and that page does not even include
the word "video".

~~~
jimmybot
Unfortunately you gotta do this these days: +django +video +tutorial

[http://www.google.com/search?q=%2Bdjango+%2Bvideo+%2Btutoria...](http://www.google.com/search?q=%2Bdjango+%2Bvideo+%2Btutorial)

There's probably a Greasemonkey script for this somewhere that can
automatically get this old behavior back for you.

~~~
ars
When did they change that? I remember when altavista used "or" by default, and
then came google which did the (controversial for the time) "and". And it
actually did work better!

And now we are back to "or"? Why? So many times I'm not happy with the results
because of that.

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nertzy
Aren't the map results organic?

Just because they're displayed in a different form doesn't make them any less
organic.

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jagjit
It looks like the results are actually good. If you are searching for dentists
in a particular area, chances are you would also like to see them on a map.

To me it is a case of Google trying to give a good search result - but using
another Google app. And in the bargain raising eyebrows. But if you compare it
with Bing, the difference between ads and results on Bing is even harder to
make out.

I am sure this will draw antitrust eyebrows too. Here Google of course is
promoting their map application with local listings and reviews. They might
actually believe that it is the best way out there to give local listings with
reviews etc. But it kind of forces everyone to add reviews in Google map which
in turn will actually become the best even it is not right now. And apps like
yelp will slowly be forced out of reckoning.

~~~
rbrcurtis
except that maps returns reviews from non-google sites. search maps for
"localino atlanta" to see what I mean.

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guelo
I thought everybody had agreed that "above the fold" means nothing.

~~~
seldo
Yes, all the recent user research we've done (I work at Yahoo) says that users
have got a lot more comfortable with scrolling since Nielsen's original
research in the 90s. We officially Do Not Care About The Fold now.

Anecdotally, for some applications (documentation, news) a single really long
document is preferred to lots of pagination. I haven't seen research to that
effect though.

~~~
Periodic
I thought that above-the-fold still has to do with first impressions. If I get
to a website and I see a link that I looks a mostly-like-what-I-want, but a
link that is definitely-what-I-want is further down the page, I'll probably
click the mostly-like-what-I-want link because I saw it first and it looks
"good enough."

Let's do a thought experiment. If you put the ads all at the top of the page,
and all the non-ad search results below the fold you'd probably get a
reasonable click rate on the ads. Now, let's think about if we put all the
non-ad search results above the fold, and all the ads down at the bottom. Do
you think people would get to those ads and read them nearly as much?

~~~
DougBTX
> I thought that above-the-fold still has to do with first impressions.

Sure, the original version (lets call it the "strong" version), was based on
the idea that "Users don't scroll", but now we know they do, so the strong
version has fallen.

The weak version could well be to do with first impressions, part of a more
general, "Put the most important stuff first" rule.

I distinctly remember a forum I used to post to, where they put very large
banner ads at the top of every page. I'd have started scrolling before the
page finished loading - you soon learn where the real content is on a page _.
Add in "banner blindness", and all bets are off.

_ Hence the increasing popularity of putting ads _between_ sections of
content... I'm looking at you, StackOverflow.

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mustpax
It's natural for an SEO to be concerned with organic results appearing over
the fold. It's the part that SEO's manipulate to their profit.

The rest of us should take a step back and think about actual quality of the
results. Now there are a lot of ads on that page, but are the organic results
going to be more useful then the Google Maps matches? For a query like
"dentist" I think Maps could be a better source for answers.

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FreeRadical
If you search for "dentists london", there are no organic results above the
fold (on my screen)!

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neovive
There is clearly a Google-risk in many markets -- especially those dealing
with content and aggregation. It's hard to compete with the massive scale that
Google has at its fingertips. They can quickly enter many markets, outside of
their core, if they choose to do so. Most of the time (but not always) they
will become a major competitor. Think GMail, Voice, Mobile Maps, etc.

~~~
mattmanser
I wonder how long it will take them to get slapped by someone though? In the
UK papers have to clearly identify adverts if presented in an editorial
format. Why do google get away with presenting adverts as search results
without clearly identifying them?

A greyed out 'sponsored link' in the right hand corner is just pathetic, I bet
most users don't even understand what that means.

~~~
nostrademons
Do you remember what Web 1.0 was like before Google? Search engines would
often mix sponsored links into their results with no indication at all that
the link had paid for their placement. Google at least puts them in a separate
section of the page, labeled.

~~~
skinnymuch
Google wasn't the first to do that.

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proee
It would be nice to see the history of a search over time from the inception
of Google to the present (with the same keyword search).

When you're in the barn, its hard to smell the odors - so having this
progressive timeline is probably the only way to objectively see how much
ground we are really losing.

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proee
Even more alarming is when Google sprinkles shopping links inside the organic
results! I recently did a search for "calculator" and the 3rd listing (inside
the organic list) was a Google shopping box of links.

This really upset me, but what can we do?

~~~
txxxxd
I think you are confused. Google shopping results are not paid advertisements.

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damir
Search results are their property and Google can do what it wants with it. I
don't get it... Why are people so surprised by Google monetizing traffic?
Wouldn't you?

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x3m
The results shown on the map are organic!

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DTrejo
Please shorten the title to

 _Excuse Me, But Where Did Google's Organic Search Results Go?_

