Search Engine Payola 295
Cranial Dome writes: "The top four portals -- MSN, AOL, Yahoo, and Terra Lycos -- all have search results tainted by their acceptance of money for listings, according to this article in the Washington Post. Of the top search engines and portals (including Alta Vista, Inktomi, and Lycos), only Google has vowed to NOT accept money from companies for guaranteed placement in search results. Another reason to love the Google thang."
Google * (Score:4, Funny)
Dumb M.F. -- Meta (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Dumb M.F. -- Meta (Score:2)
Then it returned Microsoft's homepage followed by a bunch of pages discussing the Easter egg. Then they finally removed the Easter egg. 8(
Come to think of it that's how I actually discovered Google in the first place I think... and of course it took about 3 searches to decide to never use another search engine ever again.
=tkk
Duh (Score:2)
Yeah (Score:2)
use others? (Score:5, Funny)
why?
Re:use others? (Score:5, Insightful)
- research something before we buy it.
- don't trust the media or corporations
- circument ads, tracking technologies, etc.
- look for the best price once we identify what we are buying
And most importantly, for every 10 of us, there are 2 million new internet users who
- click on the first link they see
- believe what the ads have to say
- want to buy from a company name they have heard of (like "AOL" or "MSN")
- think "special offers" are really special (because their mommy said so).
Re:use others? (Score:2)
Re:use others? (Score:2)
no wonder (Score:2, Interesting)
In other news (Score:4, Funny)
It also turns out that some webmasters run banner ads on their websites, being paid money by corporations for key product placement. At a site like Slashdot, for instance, more than a million pages are viewed each day, and the ads are seen there, too.
Finally, it turns out that sarcastic responses on the above-mentioned Slashdot site are often met with poor ratings and insulting replies. Details to follow...
Re:In other news (Score:5, Informative)
But, when Yahoo|Terra Lycos|MSN|AOL|Inktomi|Alta Vista put in a search result link to websites that that have paid to be listed first, you don't know if it's a "real" result, or if someone has paid to put it their.
If they put these "sponsored links" like Google does it, it'll be a "clean" way to make advertisment (and money). That's one of the reason why Google is so popular.
Re:In other news (Score:2)
Re:In other news (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, you do. If you visit any of the sites you mentioned you will see that the "sponsored" links are set apart and labelled differently from the rest of the search results. And, *gasp*, they have a link that explains that these are sponsored results.
If you're really concerned, visit the source [overture.com] of all those evil, and relevant, sponsored results and you can see how much each advertiser is paying per click. Then, you can scroll down to the free listings and use those.
Seriously people, why would someone *pay* to direct traffic to their business web site if it wasn't traffic that's going to spend money?
Re:In other news (Score:2)
Quite right. And that explains Google's skyrocketing popularity, despite much in the way of advertising. It gives users the most useful results, not the most paid-for ones.
Re:In other news (Score:2)
that Google == PBS
You get no adds save for "this search was brough to you by.." in the side boxes and they are small text adds and not 30 second mini-infomercials like you see on some sites/channels.
How Slashdot Minimized Payola (Score:2)
First of all, for those of you who don't know about the REAL Payola Click... A little to the left... Now down... Right HERE! [history-of-rock.com]
Payola - The paying of cash or gifts in exchange for airplay.
It's illegal, and record companies do it EVERY DAY, EVERY SONG through a 3rd party otherwise known as "indies" (Independent Record Promoters)
While I'm at it, here's another link to a Salon article: The Salon Article [salon.com] (They have more)
Not only is it illegal and the record companies essentially pay the radio stations to play thier songs, now the record companies MUST pay the indies, or they will never hear thier songs. (As demonstrated with Pink Floyd when thier label decided to boycott the indies. The result: While Pink Floyd ranked in the sales charts, you couldn't hear them on the radio if you tried for a period of X months in the early 80's.)
Slashdot can be so sensational sometimes they deserve to be mocked, but it sucks when something as blatently corrupt as Payola is potentially minimized as a result.
Of course they accept money for placement results. (Score:4, Interesting)
Read their information about submitting your site to their search engines and the available enhanced listings, listing options etc. This is nothing new.
What I like to see is Google's far more elegant solution of providing real unadulterated search results, while still providing a paid option on the side. The other engines would do well to adopt a similar model.
As a matter of fact (Score:4, Informative)
The difference is that Google does it in a straight forward way, and marks those links as "Sponsored links".
You can buy a link on the search of a word for a fairly low price.
See http://www.google.com/ads/ for the detials.
Re:As a matter of fact (Score:2)
Re:As a matter of fact (Score:2)
This whole scandal with respect to Web search engines reminds me so much of a recent trend in magazine advertising.
Have you noticed how many magazines have full sections of "articles" with special page numbers or small headers and footers that say "Advertisement". You know the ones, Special Section on How High Tech Businesses Love $LOCALE_WITHOUT_HIGHTECH, etc.
Those articles and sections are usually pretty polished writing and look, for all intensive purposes, like bona fide "articles".
It got me to thinking about how much of a typical magazine's content might be similar articles, sans the "Advertisement" qualifying label.
You are wrong, wrong, wrong. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:As a matter of fact (Score:2, Funny)
will find you.
--
Re:As a matter of fact (Score:2)
My question is .. (Score:5, Interesting)
How long until the laws of (current) economics catch up with Google, and they can no longer afford to do the right thing?
Does anyone have any insight into Google's money situation? Where the money comes from? Are they are taking losses on traffic? Could they economically handle disillutioned surgers from all the other search engines?
Or is it just that the other search engines will do anything for a buck?
Re:My question is .. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:My question is .. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My question is .. (Score:2)
And sometimes both! (Score:3, Funny)
Check out the search here [google.com].
Very clever.
Wrong: Google Makes 70% Of Revenue From Ads (Score:3, Informative)
This is contrary to statements that have been made by Google executives and considering that they just launched their Google Search Appliance two weeks ago [slashdot.org] it highly unlikely that it is thier primary source of income.
Here's a link to the C|Net article which states that most of their revenue comes from ads [com.com]
Re:My question is .. (Score:2)
Right now Google makes most of their money by selling their search services to other web sites. The main search site is really mostly advertizing for their search services. You're supposed to use it and say, "Hey, if it works that well for the whole web, it will work well for my site too." I also get the impression that a lot of their expenses are related to the cost of constantly spidering and re-spidering the whole net, which they have to do anyway for their paid services. That means that the visible search is probably cheaper in real terms than you realize.
Re:My question is .. (Score:2)
here's your answer(s) (Score:5, Informative)
> catch up with Google, and they can no longer
> afford to do the right thing?
It could be quite a while. Google is profitable, and the click-through rate on the ads that you *CAN* purchase from them (clearly demarcated as ads) is phenomenal. They're doing fine.
> Does anyone have any insight into Google's
> money situation? Where the money comes from?
Google stays profitable by aggressively negotiating bandwidth from several suppliers. The guy who runs the network there is a former coworker of mine. In fact, I'm logged into his computer right now
> Are they are taking losses on traffic? Could
> they economically handle disillutioned surgers
> from all the other search engines?
See above. In short, yes, but this depends on the economic climate and the willingness of the networks to play ball.
> Or is it just that the other search engines
> will do anything for a buck?
IMHO, yes.
Realistically, when was the last time someone asked you to Yahoo! or Altavista their next blind date? Google is a societal totem and if they fell prey to financial weakness, they would be snapped up immediately. John Doerr, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin have not allowed that to happen to their creation. I salute them, and all of my friends and coworkers who went to work for them. It is a great product and makes its own markets.
Re:here's your answer(s) (Score:2)
Google certainly represents the kind of corperate vision I wished there was more of. They actually seem to be interested in sustaining off the virtue of their technology and public image, not their sales & marketing departments.
Re:here's your answer(s) (Score:2)
Greed therefore dictates that Google not change its proven successful model in favor of a proven less successful model; if it does, it'll get crushed by the next Google.
Re:My question is .. (Score:2)
http://google.com/jobs/culture.html
Doesn't look like they're on a sinking ship to me... I've heard that google mades loads through licensing its engine though.
Re:My question is .. (Score:3, Funny)
The money they save from using a Red Hat linux cluster [redhat.com] instead of Windows must be what keeps them afloat.
Re:My question is .. (Score:2)
Never. The question you SHOULD be asking is how long Yahoo and friends can continue to display false positives before they are forced out of business by consumer backlash.
IF we lived in a world where all search engines followed the same practices, then sure, the most dispicable one would be king. But all it takes is *one* do-gooder, like Google, to turn the tables on the bad guys. I haven't used any search engine *but* Google for over three years now, and I don't feel the need to. I think more and more people see Google as the "good guys", and that goes a *long* way.
I know of people clicking on Googles ad links *just becuase they want to give something back*. When was the last time you EVER clicked on an ad link over at Yahoo?
The end result of Google's Good Idea is that they end up making *more* money by being the lone good guy than they ever could being just one of scores of bad guys.
Read your referral logs (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Read your referral logs (Score:2)
I guess Yahoo! changed their domain to google.com?
Search results (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why Google is better for the obscure (Score:4, Insightful)
But on Google [google.com], I get 14 Slashdot post links [google.com], which seems a lot more relevant to the original search terms.
I guess sites like MP3.com have paid the other engines quite well. Gotta love Google and their text-matching-only searching.
A Non Story (Score:3, Insightful)
In fairness, most portals attempt to separate their paid listings from their unbiased search results with labels. Terra Lycos calls paid links "sponsored sites," AOL "sponsored links." Netscape labels them more ambiguously "partner search results."
I use Yahoo! religiously. It is completely unequivocal about which hits are sponsored (read: bought) and which are not. Yahoo! uses Google for results not in their hierarchical database (though admittedly, not as powerful as using Google directly). This story is about as titillating as the fact Windows Media player caches a list of media you've played on YOUR machine (scandalous!). However, while I enjoy an opportunity to take MS down a notch with FUD, I will not stand for such abuse for my beloved portal, Yahoo!.
How badly do they need the money (Score:3, Interesting)
Yahoo using google? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is yahoo modifying the results so that their customer's searches appear near the top?
Re:Yahoo using google? (Score:3, Informative)
1. Try searching for "pogo sticks" on yahoo.
2. Note the url.
3. Scroll down and hit the next button.
4. Repeat until you see google.yahoo.com
Note, they put sponsored links above it. That and after seeing the last page of results (in this case, the 1st page is the last), it lets you use google.
Proof that they don't alaways use google, search for "cars". You'll get a bunch of their directory links and sponsored links.
And well it SHOULD be tainted! (Score:3, Funny)
Now to keep Google alive (Score:4, Interesting)
Support quality companies and keep Google afloat!
How Google Makes Money (Score:5, Informative)
That's from a very cool recent interview with him from CNN [cnn.com].
Re:How Google Makes Money (Score:2)
According to this Sept 2001 article [searchenginewatch.com], 2/3 of Google's revenue is from advertisements.
Google can't survive without ads, but it's ironic considering the founders Brin and Page once said [scu.edu.au] "...we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers...[A]dvertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is...in the academic realm."
Another reason for loving google (Score:2)
Grand Prize
$10,000 in cash
VIP visit to Google Inc. in Mountain View, California
Potentially run your prize-winning code on Google's multi-billion document repository (circumstances permitting)
Rhetoric is popular (Score:4, Insightful)
Sigh. Yeah, but the Yellow Pages are not called a "Search Engine". They are called a "Directory Listing". It's much more obvious to people that ads are ads, listings are listings, and none of the entries are there out of the goodness of the Yellow Page publishers' hearts.
A better analogy would be to 'merge' the yellow pages with the white pages. Assume there are 425,432 people named 'Mike Smith'. Finding Mike Smith's phone number is annoying. But now you have to deal with 500,000 more bought (even if indicated on the page) 'Mike Smiths'. Its not even so much that people are fooled into thinking commercial entries with non-commercial, but rather that the sponsorship of the product is getting in the way of the original intent of the product. In this case, now you have one million Mike Smith entries to check out. In the case of web searches, that page with the result you wanted might have been the 4th page without sponsored entries, but now it's on the 30th page.
There's nothing wrong with sponsorship, but everything wrong with it when it reduces the effectiveness of the product or service it's financially supporting. I mean, whats the point?
All eggs, one basket (Score:2, Insightful)
2) There's also nothing stopping another company from buying them out in the future and changing their advertisment/search results policy.
3) The article said that E-Bay pays 10-11 cents per click-through to their site. Why not write a script that repeatedly goes to the site through Yahoo? You'd tie up their bandwidth and cost them a fortune.
4) Lastly, what's to stop microsoft from paying top dollar for searches including the words "Linux," "open source," and "monopoly"?
Re:All eggs, one basket (Score:2)
2) Duh.
3) Sounds fun to me, although I'd support just forcing them to rename themselves a la Yellow Pages instead of a Search Engine. But culture jamming is cool, no args here.
4) Nothing. I think I recall a story about them having bought "Linux". As for "monopoly", why on earth would they do that? I mean, do you think they'd buy links for "companies with anti-competative practices"? But "Linux" and "open Source"
pr0n (Score:2)
Or is that images.google.com
Google doesn't accept money, but accepts cheaters (Score:5, Insightful)
99% of the pages we submit to Google aren't real sites. We buy a lot of domains (with explicit keywords) . Then, out of every domain, we do tons of subdomains with other keywords. All related web sites are different. But they only have one page, automatically generated by sets of scripts. These pages have randomly chosen keywords and pictures, and every fake site have links to a dozen of other fake sites. On all sites, there's only one link to a real site. A real user will immediately catch the right link (because it's a big picture, it has a caption like "click here to access the site", etc) . But search engines are crawling.
Googles gives better ranking to web sites that have a lot of other web sites linking it. So we abuse that. All our sites have excellent scoring because fake sites are referring other fake sites. It takes 10 minutes to automatically generate hundreds of fake sites. Apache's mod_rewrite is extensively used. We have an entiere team devoted to reading mailing-lists of search engine software (like ASPSeek... Google uses a lot of ASPSeek ideas), in order to abuse search engines.
So although Google's ranking doesn't depend on money, it isn't fair. It depends on how people are cheating with it.
PS: I don't support what the company is doing, it's a shame, and I'm looking for a new job.
Re:Google doesn't accept money, but accepts cheate (Score:2, Funny)
um
i mean...
never mind.
Re:Google doesn't accept money, but accepts cheate (Score:4, Interesting)
I have noticed that the quality of Google hits has been dropping dramatically as people study these techniques.
DMOZ [dmoz.org] is one of my favorite engines because people look at the pages at least. Of course, DMOZ is owned by AOL now, and will be subject to the AOL agendas.
Since Google calculates the number of links to different sites in its weight calculation, I try to make sure all of my sites have a rich index to high quality sites, but it seems that promoting quality is an uphill battle.
Re:Google doesn't accept money, but accepts cheate (Score:2)
Re:Google doesn't accept money, but accepts cheate (Score:2)
I can't think of any situations where this would unfairly degrade a user's quality rating...anyone?
Re:Google doesn't accept money, but accepts cheate (Score:5, Informative)
But yes, all our domains resolve to 10 IPs among three C classes. There's probably a way for search engines to detect too many loops between different sites that resolves to the same IP, and I hope Google will implement that.
But well... It's just like any form of SPAM. We have mail filters that check RFC conformance, keywords, RBL lists, etc. but we still get more and more mail spam, because spammers use more and more sophisticated software. It's an endless fight. This is really lousy and it degrades the whole internet.
Re:Motherfucker! (Score:4, Informative)
Porn sites make a lot of money. But watching porn movies all the day probably destroys their mind.
Re:Google doesn't accept money, but accepts cheate (Score:2)
Also, subdomains are just a quick way to better spam Google, but to promote one single site, my company buys 100+ _real_ domains (whoose names are combinations of keywords related to the target site) .
To fight against this, search engines should detected ping-pong loops between domains, and strong similarities between web sites. Not that easy when you index millions of web pages.
I know this is going to hurt... (Score:3, Insightful)
Search engines are essentially a very useful service provided to the public by for-profit companies at no direct cost to the individual - they are FREE! They are one of the few remaining offerings in the world that meet the 'something-for-nothing' criteria...
Of course, the companies that provide these services are not exactly doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They compete amongst the other search engines to win to win favor with the users and then turn their daily page hits into advertising dollars via banners, pop-up's and other such advertising... Now that web advertising has slowed with the rest of the world economy, how long did you truly think it would take before the parent companies and investors demanded further, less principled tactics to increase profits? Obviously, not long...
And here comes the stinger...I don't thing there is anything wrong with this. Ultimately, the companies that back search engines have a business to run - this requires revenue. No revenue, no search engines....and exactly where do you think that would leave us all in the jungle of information that is now the internet!
And as for Google, I applaud there adherence to morals and integrity. But don't think that if it comes down to it, they will not do whatever is necessary (including accepting money for search placement) to stay afloat in tough economic times. And I would want them too - a slightly corrupt Google is better than no Google at all!!!
Re:I know this is going to hurt... (Score:3, Informative)
Why do you think those engines aren't any damn good? because the returns are becomeinf less and less relevent.
But would it be Google? (Score:2, Insightful)
a slightly corrupt Google is better than no Google at all!!!
A slightly corrupt Google ceases to be Google. I can see no reason why Google would have to mix its sponsored links with the rest of the results.
Re:I know this is going to hurt... (Score:3, Interesting)
As to Google, I like it not only because of clearly marked ads, but also because of the damn well working matching.
An interesting sidenote is that matching also seems to be dynamically adjusted based on hits (ie. times user clicks on particular search result). I noticed that for one of my "own" pages, which went from number 8 to number 1 in a week (took a month for Google to find the page, but only a week to upgrade it... the page gets 90% of hits via Google actually). It's not a huge amount of hits (5-10 a day), but I think search matching works well (page contains a piece of open source code in a popular programming language, so it's reasonably easy to "guess" correct keywords; but it seems that there aren't all that many real alternatives, even though result set has ~7000 pages)... and that's not because it's my page and I want tons of hits but because it seems like a perfect match, compared to most other results returned (like I was objective observer here... :-) ).
Tainted Engines (Score:2)
Maybe it is high time people realize that search engines that "slight" there returned results a probably not as accurate or as trusted. In the back of my mind I never touch Yahoo, MS, et al for broad internet searches because I can't convince myself they'll produce an accurate unbiased list of hits.
Or in short, why should I believe Yahoo's search results over MSN's? Why should even try either when I know Google will give me many more hits in an unbias manner?
Google's Sponsored Links (Score:3, Informative)
Intel® COMPILER - Improve Application Performance
www.intel.com/software/products
how about... "stocks"
Convenient account access. Powerful tools. Advanced trading technology.
www.ameritrade.com
The average computer user (my mom), would see this as the first result to her search.. but really its a well disguised advertisement.
Google is great, don't get me wrong.. but before you go bashing other engines for taking money for guaranteed links, you should bash Google for their manipulative and sneaky ads.
Re:Google's Sponsored Links (Score:2)
Catalog of Free Compilers and Interpreters.
the free-compilers list, fill out the following form:
www.idiom.com/free-compilers/ - 12k - Cached - Similar pages
I didn't get that. I entered "compilers" and got:
Catalog of Free Compilers and Interpreteers: introduction
Catalog of Free Compilers and Interpreters.
the free-compilers list, fill out the following form:
www.idiom.com/free-compilers/ - 12k - Cached - Similar pages
...which is pretty much the opposite of what you said. Is it randomized?
Re:Google's Sponsored Links (Score:4, Informative)
Almost identical?
You seriously need to get your eyes checked.
A sponsored ad (specifically the search you mention) is:
- in bold
- two lines
- says SPONSORED LINK on the right
- no Description
- no Category
- no size
- no spider date
- no cached
a real search result is:
- not in bold
- at least five lines
- contains the segment of text off the site with the keyword higlighted
- does NOT say sponsored link
- can have a Description
- can have a Category
- has a document size
- has a spider date
- has a cached link
I suppose if your definition of "similar" is "they both use alphanumeric characters", then you're right, but I suggest that definition is a bit too wide.
Re:Google's Sponsored Links (Score:2)
I'm on a laptop, running Konqueror, so god only knows why I'm not quite seeing it right. To me, it looks just a -shade- darker than the background white, but so close that I can't tell where the boundary is.
How is this different than the Yellow Pages? (Score:3, Insightful)
No one complains about this practice. There's no doubt that the more you pay, the more prominently you're displayed. How is this different than a search site? In fact, the YP is even worse than the search sites. If you don't pay at all, you're given a crap listing in the White Pages. You don't even turn up in a search by category.
I guess you could argue that a search site is supposed to return the most relivant sites first. Or, at least, people might think that. But, one could argue that a search should return the sites that most useful or at least somewhat useful.
Or, you could look at it this way: without ad revenue, there would be no search site at all, and that would be worse, right?
Pay-Per-Click Search Listings on Yahoo, et al. (Score:5, Informative)
The answer is yes, definitely. A well-optimized campaign of paid search terms at Overture (formerly GoTo.com), can result in huge increases in relevant traffic and sales.
Many search engines, including Google, don't provide relevant information because they are bloated with spam (spoofed web pages, often for porn sites) and they also can't keep up with new submissions (so relevant content never gets indexed). Google certainly remains the best place to find certain types of information, but if you use Google to search for a specific consumer product, you'll get mostly garbage.
In late 2000, I designed the paid-search strategy for MovieGoods.com, which sells movie posters. We submitted about 450,000 unique search terms (including several variations for each actor/actress name, director, movie title, and movie theme), and GoTo.com approved about 27,000 of them (they won't let you buy a search term unless their records show that it has been searched more than 10 times in the past 90 days).
Of course, for a company like MovieGoods, a huge portion of traffic comes from people who search for simple terms like "movie poster" (the top ten search terms probably drive 60% of the GoTo/Overture-sourced traffic). But the other 25,000 search terms (like "Fellowship of the Ring movie poster" or "Antonio Banderas posters") drive a lot of sales, and usually at a very low cost.
For a merchant like MovieGoods, the key is to carefully track the performance of each search term: I determined how many dollars of sales were generated by each search phrase, and how much we spent, and we achieved a simple balance: for every $1 we spent at GoTo/Overture, we generated $6 in sales.
And consumers also benefitted by finding exactly what they were looking for. Yes, Overture does allow some off-topic bidding, but they are trying to crack down on it so that only genuinely responsive links come up in the paid listings.
Of course, some consumers ignore the paid results on search engines (including Google, which does sell top-of-list placement and right-margin AdWords, so they are NOT so much holier than the others). But like so many "bad things" on the internet, paid results work for the merchants and often for the consumer.
There are some interesting issues: for example, if I search for "MovieGoods" and a competitor bids for the #1 position for that term, there are some real concerns. There have even been lawsuits over this issue (really not much different, legally, than the "Meta Keyword" disputes).
Of course, if the result said "Click Here for MovieGoods" and instead the consumer is misdirected to a competitor (or to a porn site), then it's just not right, but I haven't seen much of this type of abuse (and Overture prohibits it, though as you'd expect they don't check all listings as carefully as some folks would like).
Also, every major search engine (including Yahoo, Alta Vista, Google, Lycos, and more) is pretty clear at distinguishing the "paid" results from the regular results. Usually the paid listings are in a different font style or size, bold or not, indented differently, or boxed to stand apart from other results.
Finally, note that on many search engines, there are multiple paid-placement opportunities. For example, on Yahoo, there are pay-per-click results from Overture, then there are paid "sponsored links," and then there are the "most popular links" which generally are the paid sponsors since the sponsor links are shown first and thus get clicked most often. On Google, there are left-margin "AdWords" as well as top-of-list placements. And everybody sells banner ads and often buttons also.
These days, most of my time is spent on designing "cost-effective marketing" campaigns, with strong emphasis on optimizing paid-search-engine placements, affiliate programs, and of course traditional search-engine-optimization strategies.
The key is that I can achieve that $5 return on every dollar spent on these strategies, but banner ads and other types of advertising rarely return even $2 in sales for every dollar spent (and often the return is pennies on the dollar). That explains why banner ad rates have plummetted so far, so fast. And it explains why the content-versus-advertising borders are getting fuzzier.
(Here on Slashdot, people complain all the time about those FatBrain links in book reviews, which will vanish in a day or two since B&N acquired FatBrain and is discontinuing the generous FatBrain affiliate program.)
-- Mark J. Welch, Internet Performance Marketing Consultant
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/consult.htm [markwelch.com]
Re:Pay-Per-Click Search Listings on Yahoo, et al. (Score:2)
This is a seller's perspective. When I type a product name into a search engine I usually *don't want* a seller, I want real unbiased info and reviews. (Actually I never do this anymore. If I want reviews I'll type '(product name) reviews' and if I want to buy it I'll type '(product name) price'). There is more to the internet then retail.
Re:Pay-Per-Click Search Listings on Yahoo, et al. (Score:2)
Decisions (Score:2, Redundant)
So by clicking on these repetedly we can cost eBay and Amazon loads of money!! However doing so supports the search engines whom have sold search placements....
To click, or not to click, that is the question.
eBay [altavista.com]
Amazon [altavista.com]
Subscription would be better (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Subscription would be better (Score:2)
I never would. I'm scum; I'm sorry.
But how about this: For $10/year you can search and not see the ads and sponsored links. Then google makes money from the purists (they pay $10/year for being pure) and they make money from scum like me (they sell ads that I wind up reading). That seems the best of both worlds, Narsindal. What do you think?
Is it immoral to take money for search results? (Score:2, Insightful)
It feels unethical to me for a search engine to take money for top spots. I'm not saying it should be illegal, don't get me wrong - I'm as libertarian [lp.org] as the next guy - but it feels somewhere between sleazy and fraudulent.
Imagine if you called directory assistance and asked for the number for Burger King, and they instead gave you the number for McDonalds (since McDonalds paid a hefty sum), and then only after a pause gave you Burger King's number. Or if Channel 5 listed the top ten films at the box office, and showed you all Paramount films as being at the top (since Paramount paid Channel 5). It's dishonest.
So what can we do about it? Use Google instead. And click their ads occasionally.
this is just stupid hysteria (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, they could be clearer, but this isn't nearly as bad as the hysterical submitter wants you to believe. In some ways, it's good. Do a search for Ted Bundy [yahoo.com] on Yahoo and you'll see a paid link to our site (not gonna tell you which one). Of the people who click that link, most end up pretty happy because we've got some cool stuff.
Overture is the company that puts must of these paid links in searches; we pay them, they pay Yahoo. Overture's standards for search terms are breathtaking - I've spent over a month arguing with them about search terms which are exactly applicable to what we're selling. They go out of their way not to be deceptive.
Of course Google will say that Overture's not a real search engine - Google's competing with them for the same market. Hello! Google isn't some great white knight, immune from the evils of capitalism. They're the best search engine by far, but their AdWords program sucks ass compared with Overture's. This whole article reads like a Google press release. Contrary to what they say, it's much much easier to get a deceptive ad in Google AdWords than in Overture (not that we've tried - it would be a waste of money).
Unless I'm looking to buy something, I avoid Overture and all the sites they sell ads to. If I am looking to buy something, Overture is a great tool to start. For knowledge, and obscure or very specific searches, of course, nothing beats Google.
From An Overture Employee... (Score:3, Informative)
The article compares Overture and Google, and for an example tried Digital Cameras... These results seem identical in relevance to me. I think the main point she missed in the article is that the bidding model forces advertisers into being relevant for what they bid on. If not they lose revenue every time some clicks but does not buy. This of course applies to Google as well now that they finally caught on.
As for the claim by Google that they are pure:
(1) Why are they getting into the Ad search business
(2) AOL, MSN and everyone else would just put Google's ads in the same place as they did before - as Google does with it sponsored listings.
(3) Google is clearly trying to move in on our profitable business model - perhaps they are the ones that should be tainted with the impure results brush - we have always simply served bidded line listings
Try "hotel in france" on Google and Overture's site -- and compare -- in fact Google has two sets of listings, their so called Sponsored ones, and their Ad Words. In this case they come up with just "Sponsored" ads, which actually look like their search listings. And they are general hotel ads, not French Hotels.
Just some stuff to think about
Winton (an Overture employee
OVERTURE:
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3. Digital cameras at Staples.com
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GOOGLE
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Re:From An Overture Employee... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is what pisses me off about paid listings. The companies assume everyone on the internet is searching for something to buy.
We aren't. Some of us, dramatic pause, actually search for information. You know, the stuff that is useful in our lives.
Overture is nothing more than a very cool, very specific, very targeted shopping index. That's it.
Reply From An Overture Employee... (Score:2, Redundant)
That is exactly what Overture is. We aren't a traditional Information retreival search engine, and that is exactly what Google is trying to muscle in on.
Look at the results on Earthlink now from Google -- and compare with AOL...
For what its worth I use Google constantly when I'm doing research - but for items I can buy, services I need, I'd prefer Overture.
Compare and Contrast:
Earthlink Web Search DVD Players [earthlink.net]
AOL Search for DVD players (Overture) [aol.com]
Winton
The future of search engines ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The search engines have a right to make money. No one doubts that at all. They are for profit and they need to make money.
With that said the only pure player in the space is google, which is sad. Sad because when you know what you're looking for
If Google were to ever change we're all screwed.
The pay per click engines are fantastic for sites that sell things, but for sites with content they are abyssmal.
I would venture to say that 50% of the sites on the internet with content are not making money at all, but are labors of love. With that said you're alienating 50% of the sites when you move to a pay per click metaphor.
As a webmaster of a content site I can attest to others claims that Google is responsible for 80% of our hits. Links from other content pages is 10% and pay per click sites, which we don't pay for, are 10% more.
As long as Google is alive and uses the searching dynamic they do the internet can be a very useful tool for information. If they go to straight pay per click we're all screwed.
Scientology knows how to manipulate Google (Score:5, Informative)
The cult of L. Ron Hubbard has managed to keep all critical sites off of the first page of search results for "scientology" using a vast web of cookie-cutter home pages and domain names all linking to one another.
Check this [operatingthetan.com] out for a full description of how they did it.
Scientology -- Not quite true (Score:3, Informative)
If you actually checked [google.com], you'd find that while that's mostly true, the #4 result returned is Operation Clambake [xenu.net] (Bearing the description: "The fight against Scientology on the Net"), which is probably the biggest and most comprehensive anti-scientology site around.
Perhaps Google should revive the old "More evil than satan himself" [google.com] search term, this time linking Scientology instead of Microsoft. :) (If you search for it now, you don't get Microsoft: what you get is a bunch of news stories about Google's prank the first time)
Re:Scientology knows how to manipulate Google (Score:2)
Society > Religion and Spirituality > Opposing Views > Scientology [google.com]
Information does want to be free (as in speech).
Re:Scientology knows how to manipulate Google (Score:2, Troll)
Anybody with half a brain already knows all they need to about Scientology...
Correction: Anyone with half a brain probably already IS a scientologist.
InitZero
How Google makes money: (Score:2, Informative)
"Last year, however, Google did follow competitors in offering sponsored links - a form of advertising based on search terms - on the top and left of search results. Today such advertising accounts for two-thirds of Google's revenues, with the remainder coming from powering searches on other Web sites, including that of Yahoo. Observers have wondered whether Google's business model can survive, especially given the downturn in Internet advertising. Schmidt insists that the company has been profitable for the last two quarters, although he declines to disclose numbers."
From here [google.com].
"Google's advertising programs enable advertisers to closely match text-based ads with users' search queries. The result is a highly targeted service that consistently produces an average click-through rate four to five times higher than the industry average for traditional banner advertising. Google provides advertisers with a full complement of monitoring services to ensure the best results. Online advertisers, such as Acura, Expedia, Eddie Bauer, Ernst & Young and REI, consistently rank Google as their top online advertising choice."
From here [businessweek.com].
"So, where's the business model? To this end, Google has started to diversify its revenue stream. It boasts 100 co-brand partners, such as The Washington Post and Netscape, that have selected Google as an embedded Internet search engine on their site. Most of these co-brand partners pay the company from $8 to $10 per thousand queries and from $600 to $2,000 per month in licensing fees. Google also has a program offering free search capabilities to smaller Web sites, with the caveat that it might begin inserting advertisements on search-query pages at a future date -- but no banner ads.
The company has also instituted a pay-for-play scheme called Adwords that allows an advertiser to purchase a word and place a small text ad on the page whenever that word is mentioned in a query. But Google is making the most money from customized intrasite search functions, built for a dozen select clients, such as router giant Cisco Systems and Linux provider Red Hat."
I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find more.
Clearing up some misinformation... (Score:4, Informative)
Recently there was an article (commented on Slashdot a few days ago) about Google selling listing spots.
Now there are posts referring to "Yahoo uses G$o$o$g$l$e..." etc...
Time to set the record straight as an outside observer (ie: I do not work for Google or it's affiliates).
(1) Google does not sell ranking spots. They sell "Sponsored Links" spots, and have for a while (though their system was in beta - not that it was labelled as such unless you read all the signup text). Those spots have been and still are on the right column of the listings labelled clearly, and occassionally on the top of the listings, also labelled clearly with a different color background than their standard white. Their ranking engine (search engine) is separate from their ad server, and the departments are supposedly separate as well.
(2) Yahoo uses Google for their standard search engine facilities - BUT STILL MAINTAINS their Yahoo Directory... you cannot pay Yahoo for placement in their google search facility - but CAN pay for placement in their directory searches - both search options (and more) are available on Yahoo by clicking the appropriate link, button or checkbox (depending on where on their site you are searching from).
- Robert
FoodPlaces.com [foodplaces.com]
I *LIKE* the paid placement results (Score:3, Interesting)
It gets Yahoo money, it gets more customers for the advertisers, and it shows me better results. What's the problem?
Suggest resolving WORKSFORME (Score:2)
P.S. That enhanced text link they speak of [Sponsored Links above and beside Google search results] can't (as far as I can tell) be opened in a seperate window.
Huh? I tried middle-clicking and right-clicking in Mozilla 2002022603 on Windows ME; both methods correctly opened new windows on all Sponsored Links that I tried. Anyone else?
Re:Ummm... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not "guaranteed placement in search results", though. Google's query-based advertising is distinct from the list of search results.
Re:public utility vs private company (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what we need! More laws!
Laws passed where? Your local city council? County legislation? State? Federal? Global? Enforcable how?
We don't need laws. We don't need regulations. We don't need to chase down unscrupulous "search engine" providers who muck with their results to prefer their sponsors.
The 'Net is a funny thing... since it's SO easy to get from one search engine to another (as opposed to say, only being able to buy milk at the one supermarket in town), people will naturally migrate towards the one that suits them best. That might be something like Google that tends NOT to preference their sponsors, or something like Yahoo that does. But we certainly don't need laws to "protect" the surfing public.
Caveat emptor.
Re:public utility vs private company (Score:2, Interesting)
A car company could buy up enough ad space through fake companies so that reports on how its SUV tips over at 10 MPH are buried in the "search results."
And you, as the customer, have no rights to demand that the search engine reveal whether or not it is allowing this or maintaining a strict division between sponsored or objective search results (for my purposes, I use the term "objective" to mean that the search engine algorithm is not weighted towards advertising dollars).
While it is a customer's responsibility to do his research, it is also a business' responsibility to be honest. Caveat emptor has been used to permit all sorts of business actions that we today view as "crimes." I don't hear anyone complaining about a law when its enforcement "protects" someone from a "criminal." Why promote a corporate right to lie? What purpose is served by doing that?
I'm not saying that every kind of enforcement is possible, but that at least if a society requires businesses to behave honestly, they protect society's right to penalize a dishonestly run business when they catch one. There is no "invisible hand" of the free market, that is, a guiding force that exists outside of the market players; those with the most clout (money) get to manipulate the market more than anyone else. If they get to manipulate the very information on which the market depends, it ain't free no more.
Re:public utility vs private company (Score:2)
Absolutely. If you want to go after someone for publishing bad information, fine... that's a different argument.
The customer? What have I paid? I've simply accessed a server and asked it for information. Where is it written that there is an expectation that that information is absolutely reliable and untainted? Unless the provider of the search engine has explicitly stated that their results are untainted and reliable, they should be suspect - the almighty Google included.
I agree with this so strongly it hurts. However, I suspect you and i have different ideas of how a society ought to punish said business. In cases like this, you punish that business by withholding your business from them, their sponsors, and anyone else you care to rope into their side of the field. It's not about passing laws, it's about social and economic pressure that encourages companies to do "the right thing".
I don't agree with the actions of these search engines, but I certainly don't wish them be made criminal. We have enough laws that we don't enforce as it is. Laws preventing this would be unenforcable anyway, since you'll never get every little country with Net access to agree (and you'll just be generating a co-location industry for them in process).
Re:public utility vs private company (Score:2)
The problem with trying to regulate and legislate everything is when does it stop?
You can't legislate morality and ethics (though it's often tried).
To me, the search engine can be compared to a random "Information Stand" put up on a corner somewhere. You learn which ones give good information and which don't, and avoid the ones that don't. We don't need laws that say "You can't set up an information stand unless you agree to these conditions on what 'good' information is". If you hit the bad one, and take their advice without crosschecking it (or asking your friends/associates which ones they use), well... it's your own damn fault.
Re:Google rocks! (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps it could be done with WinNT, but that's not the point.
The point is that Linux is scalable and robust enough to actually do the job. Many would have contested that at one point.
Another point is that the total cost in OS software licenses for 4000+ nodes is $0.00. Let's see Microsoft match that one! ;-)
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
correct and incorrect (Score:2)