That they're getting better at it is why click growth outpaces traffic growth. If they stayed the same at it then click growth would equal traffic growth.
> It seems unlikely it's just targeting, without spilling over into something that's bad for consumers.
It could be one or the other or both. Care to present any evidence or reasoning as to why we should make one conclusion or the other?
They certainly do things today that they did not do 5 years ago. Like specific query results where everything above the fold on desktop is an ad.
I personally do not think that's good for consumers. I suspect, though, that you disagree.
On your other point, they are getting better every year as measured by a YoY comparison...not just plain growth. Double-digit percentage YoY improvement. That's hard to do.
Do you have an non-anecdotal evidence to present? A few advertisement laden queries and a "funny feeling" is rarely a sound investment strategy.
Where GP is wrong is that this is something "they did not do 5 years ago". There were a ton of articles complaining about it in 2008/2009. Unless it is happening on many times more search terms than it was back then, it wouldn't explain the increased click rate at all. The fact that the increase was YoY makes it even more dubious.
YoY click growth percentage has been higher than traffic growth for years and years for Google. I suspect there are a number of reasons for it.
The 100% ads above the fold did get a lot of complaints in 2014, specifically because Google announced it would penalize sites that did that. Quite a few examples of Google doing this were subsequently pointed out, due to the irony.
You are correct in that I don't have an itemized, timestamped list of the things they've done over the years to either push organics down the fold, or expose ads further down the fold.
There are many things they've done that are pretty subtle as well.
- The wikipedia information in the sidebar when you do informational searches used to have links to wikipedia...leading you away from google. They now keep you within Google, and include links to ads: http://i.imgur.com/j3w9LbP.png
- Various widgets push organics down pretty far: http://i.imgur.com/VwYH7mY.png
- There are queries that became 100% above the folds ads within the last 1 or 2 years. Travel is especially aggressive: http://i.imgur.com/89iYCmc.png
- Other widgets that aren't ads per se, but serve to keep you on Google's site as you drill down to pages that will have ads: http://i.imgur.com/v1urMBm.png
> The wikipedia information in the sidebar when you do informational searches used to have links to wikipedia...leading you away from google. They now keep you within Google, and include links to ads http://i.imgur.com/j3w9LbP.png
That still has a link to wikipedia
> Various widgets push organics down pretty far: http://i.imgur.com/VwYH7mY.png
That second box isn't an ad, it's just a called out search result.
> There are queries that became 100% above the folds ads within the last 1 or 2 years. Travel is especially aggressive: http://i.imgur.com/89iYCmc.png
As I said, this has been a thing for more than 5 or 6 years:
http://www.seobook.com/excuse-me-where-did-googles-organic-s... (from 2009)
> Other widgets that aren't ads per se, but serve to keep you on Google's site as you drill down to pages that will have ads: http://i.imgur.com/v1urMBm.png
They aren't ads per se...so would have at most a secondary effect on ad click through rates. It's also hard to argue that this (and the other) examples would be the cause of user harm as you argued above.
> YoY click growth percentage has been higher than traffic growth for years and years for Google.
You're missing my point because that's exactly it. Unless things have changed substantially in the last year, and every year before that, these things wouldn't explain the growth in click rates.
>>That second box isn't an ad, it's just a called out search result.
It also consumes vertical space, pushing the organics down. The relevance is also quite low, being a link to a discontinued product.
>>You're missing my point because that's exactly it.
Not missing your point. I'm not saying the few examples I gave are everything they've done. I think they've been doing things like, for several years, this to sustain the expected growth. Lacking a dividend, the pressure to sustain growth rates is pretty high.
Edit: It's also likely that for other purposes (testing/deployment/whatever), these things (and similar ones I haven't noticed) have dials for where/when/how often they are exposed, either by geography, search terms, demographic, or some other criteria. A bunch of dials would also allow you to smooth growth if you wanted.
You also put "funny feeling" in quotes, as if I'd said that.
In short, the repeated pattern of click growth outpacing traffic growth has me concerned that they are achieving that, in part, with strategies that are bad for the end user. Google says they care about such things. https://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/
Non-anecdotal evidence is hard to collect, since Google doesn't release statistics like "organic click growth" or "real estate devoted to organic vs ads".
I can certainly post screenshots of queries that are 100% ads above the fold, but lacking the kind of information only Google has, they are, by definition, anecdotal.
There might be something to dig into here. I'd like to learn more. Can you expand on your previous point?
I recall that when froogle/google-shopping first launched they were just filling in content from search results because they didn't have very much direct engagement by vendors. maybe that's changed now so the search results were just scaled back because not necessary.
I dunno. I'm willing to accept non-nefarious explanations for this. That doesn't mean it isn't on the whole better for google and their paid advertisers. Whether or not that also means its worse for consumers is an open question.
http://googlecommerce.blogspot.com/2012/05/building-better-s...
>We believe that having a commercial relationship with merchants will encourage them to keep their product information fresh and up to date. Higher quality data—whether it’s accurate prices, the latest offers or product availability—should mean better shopping results for users, which in turn should create higher quality traffic for merchants.