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The 110 Million Dollar Button
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Nov 23, 2007 08:29 AM
from the that's-a-big-twinkie dept.
from the that's-a-big-twinkie dept.
Reservoir Hill writes "The 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button on Google's search page may cost the company up to $110 million in lost ad revenue every year according to a report on American Public Media's Marketplace. Tom Chavez says that since the company makes money selling ads on its search results page, the 1% of users who use the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button never see Google's ads - the button automatically directs them to their first search result. So why does Google keep the button? Marisa Mayer, Google's vice president responsible for everything on the search page, says that 'it's possible just to become too dry, too corporate, too much about making money' and the 'I'm Feeling Lucky,' button reminds you that 'people here have personality.' Web usability expert Jacob Nielsen says the whimsy serves another business purpose: 'Oh we're just two kind of grad students hanging out and having a beer and having a grand old time,' not you know, 'We are 16,000 people working on undermining your privacy.'"
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Small change (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Small change (Score:5, Informative)
Never have, but if you type a phrase into the address bar in Firefox it does the same thing.
Re:Small change (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Small change (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Small change (Score:5, Funny)
Which part of "I'm feeling lucky" was it that you didn't understand?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Small change (Score:5, Informative)
It's easy enough to fix: just go to about:config and change the keyword.URL property from its default value,
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q= [google.com]
to something like
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnI=&q= [google.com]
which should restore the "I'm Feeling Lucky" functionality and get you back to normal.
Re:Small change (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Small change (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Small change (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not here it's not (Windows XP, Firefox 2.0.0.9, both installed fresh about 2 weeks ago). It just goes to Google search for 'wp slashdot'.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Small change (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Or.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's silly. (Score:3, Insightful)
RTFS (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
$40 Million Dollar Logo (Score:5, Funny)
It's a subliminal suggestion (Score:3, Interesting)
They'd add a button for "I'm feeling smart" or "I'm feeling sexy" if they found a way of justifying such a button's presence.
Re:It's a subliminal suggestion (Score:5, Funny)
Luckily, they don't have the "I'm feeling bored to death", otherwise i would spend too much time there.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's a subliminal suggestion (Score:5, Informative)
Reason? (Score:3, Interesting)
Users don't use it, but they simply feel happier, more secure, having it around.
Personally I'm missing the "I feel lucky" capability from Firefox search bar. Say, enter a text - a partial URL, a set of 100% sure keywords etc and press shift-enter, or shift-click the magnifying glass. Quite often I KNOW the result will be first, sometimes because I used this search before, sometimes because there's no way anything else could have beaten it. Sometimes I don't remember if the domain was com, org, us, de, net, eu, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't really cost them that much. (Score:5, Insightful)
Those people who use it are
(a) people who already know that the result they want is the first one and wouldn't click anything else anyway.
(b) people doing silly google-hacks, like "miserable failure", or whatever.
(c) people who will come back any use google's regular search anyway for more results once they've seen the "lucky" one.
For all these people, using the "feeling lucky" button isn't stopping them clicking on any ads, because they wouldn't click them anyway. In fact, it is actually likely to be adding to their brand awareness of google, and thus making them more likely to come back to google for other searches where they might click on ads.
So yes, it might lose them a *few* ad clicks on the *actual* search involved, but long term, those people will be back and will click on other ads. Google isn't losing anything from this.
AJAX (Score:5, Interesting)
eg if you type in "oxford" the button should change to say "Take me to www.ox.ac.uk"
Re:AJAX (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en [google.com]
Re: (Score:2)
For example, I use the Flock browser. If you type into the search bar, it updates a drop-down list with results from Yahoo as y
see... (Score:4, Funny)
And my capcha was confide, spooky...
They wouldn't look at the ad anyway (Score:2, Interesting)
It's branding. (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice the phrase is also prominent (and useful!) in Picasa.
The point is, losing it would be a big change to the brand, like making Coke cans with no red on them.
Who actually uses that button? (Score:2)
It's Marissa (Score:2)
french military victories (Score:3, Funny)
Needs more risk (Score:5, Funny)
In order to generate a real, winner-takes-all atmosphere of living on the edge, an element of risk should be introduced. For instance, a 60% chance of going to the first search result, a 30% chance of going to tubgirl, a 9% chance of having your identity stolen and a 1% chance of having bomb-making instructions downloaded to your machine and a tip-off email sent to the relevant authorities.
Googlewhack Spam (Score:3, Interesting)
It can be pretty easy to foil, as this post [shoemoney.com] on Shoemoney demonstrates.
And yes, you too can have fun in /. with Google queries for goatse.cx, tubgirl and 2girls1cup.
That's just one of many "open redirectors" (Score:3, Informative)
There are "open redirectors" on many major sites, including Google, AOL, eBay, and Microsoft Live. (Yahoo plugged their hole by giving their open redirector its own, easily blockable, domain.) We mentioned this on Slashdot a few days ago, [slashdot.org] and someone imme
heh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not as expensive as (Score:2)
People use it?! I'm shocked! (Score:2, Insightful)
Someone, quick, call Jakob Nielsen! We need
usa-what? (Score:2, Insightful)
How long (Score:3, Insightful)
The 'maximize profit at the expense of everything including customer experience' really gets to me sometimes.
What Jacob Nielsen said (Score:5, Funny)
Time to put on the tin foil hat -- I am on to you now google! You just made my list!
solution! (Score:3, Funny)
Privacy? (Score:3, Informative)
Undermining my privacy? The only information Google is able to get abut me is what I do online -- and not much of that. I wipe cookies once in a while, and that's the only reliable way they have to track me on other sites. Take off the tinfoil hat, Nielsen.
Of course, to throw them off the scent, I randomly view Oprah's website, NASCAR videos, and horse porn once in a while.
Tough Job (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)