What is Google’s motivation?
Was reading this article on who is actually clicking on ads and it got me thinking about something slightly problematic: Google doesn’t have any real motivation for improving search results because the worse the results are, the more likely you are to click on the ads. Obviously this is oversimplified, but it’s not something I’d thought of before.
While I’m on the topic of questionable Google motivation, I really don’t agree with their paid link policy. Call me crazy, but I don’t see the difference between a paid link and a non-paid one and overall it screams to me of Google squashing AdSense competition. Pete made some good points on this. (For the record, I think this needs to be a full entry.)
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Good point. But, don’t forget that in order to keep advertisers coming to Google, they need to stay the best search engine on the web. That’s pretty good motivation in itself.
I think that Google’s game plan is to be the ultimate internet-enabled tool box for all internet users (a perfect case-study in branded utility). Make the tools plentiful, well designed, and free. And then continue to make boat loads of money off the ads.
But the ad money only follows the attention and affinity of the users.
There are lots of conspiracies about Google’s policies, but there are many ways Google can refute this. I am convinced that Google puts the user experience first so that it attracts loyalty from its consumers and its advertisers, all of whom can easily go elsewhere if Google betrays them.
Exhibit A: Google recently shrunk the clickable area of an ad from the whole shaded box to just the hyperlink itself to minimize invalid clicks. Why would Google do this if it wanted to make the most of every ad?
Exhibit B: The ads above the natural search results get the highest click-throughs, but Google only promotes an ad there if its quality score is high enough. Google could earn far more for those searches if it always showed ads above the natural results, but Google leaves money on the table.
Exhibit C: Google doesn’t charge advertisers for suspected invalid clicks; most suspected click fraud on Google is actually mitigated by Google that way, not by the advertiser’s request for an investigation. Why would Google leave money on the table – we’re talking about what’s likely hundreds of millions of dollars a year – if it could instead just wait for advertises to refute charges and wind up refunding far less?
There are other exhibits to add to it. Even if you don’t agree with a given policy, the big picture is very much in Google’s favor here.
Google’s motivation is to sell advertising. In the long term, being the best free search brings them the most traffic. In the short term, they have incentives to game their systems to extract the most money from paid advertisers.
Two points to consider. One, Google’s search algorithms are proprietary. Therefore, we have to trust by their word that they are doing what they say they are doing.
The second thing is that the average user doesn’t know the difference between the organic search results and paid sponsored results, even though they are labeled and have a different color background. Academic and market research shows an alarming inability to differentiate between the two. In fact, most people often cannot identify when a link sends them off a site.
I see a difference between paid and unpaid links. And I understand why google would want to know what is what. But, my point is that paid and unpaid isn’t black and white. There’s lots of factors that influences someone’s decision to link to another website.
While we’re on conspiracies, here’s another related one from Ethan Stock: What Google hates and loves: Why Wikipedia is taking over search results
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Here is a recent blog post on florists and Google Local Search. I’m not really big on conspiracy theories. However, this post does show that Google has lots of different incentives at play, and it is really hard to know what its search and ranking algorithms are doing.
that’s a good article. But I think that propensity to respond to an ad has been linked with your level of naivite for awhile now. And, as a lot of people tend to associate intelligence with income, the general perception is that the poor respond to ads more than the rich do. You see this a lot with direct mail, actually. Most companies that rely on direct mail as a means of obtaining customers – like mortgage companies, or credit card companies – are in the business of desperation. Meaning, the more you need ( rather than want) a service, the more likely you will be to respond to their ad. Wealthier people who are looking into buying a house have a range of options open to them, so they don’t feel the need to explore all of the offers that land on their doorstep, like a person in a lower income bracket might.
This is even more interesting when you apply it to direct response advertising online – it’s actually sort of a conundrum. You want qualified leads, but you also need to appeal to people who will take the leap of clicking on the ad. Which explains why you see a lot of digital DR media running on portals like Yahoo, and other sites where the income range of users is fairly wide. It seems to me that DR media online works best for services that people need – like car insurance, or something. With a business like this, you increase the likelihood that the people who click on your ads will actually turn into an acquisition, because the product is a necessity, and not something frivolous. I worked on digital DR campaigns for a subscription based cable channel – something seen as a luxury to most of America – and deciding where to approach people online was always tough, because the people most likely to click on the ad were also the least likely to follow through and purchase. So running media on income-neutral sites was a better option than a highly targeted campaign.
um, i know all the other comments are about Google. I don’t really have any thoughts there.