Hacker News Reader

Comment by SteveGerencser | Hacker News Reader

I'm not surprised by this a all. I do PPC for a living and I find that a lot of ad spend is totally wasted on paying for clicks that you would have gotten anyway, especially on Google and on Mobile devices.

A lot of big brands bid on, and pay for, their brand terms because someone at some point told then that they should. So when a person uses search to find Uber, they get an ad first, then a regular listing second. And almost everyone clicks the first link. Take away the ad and the free click is first.

View on HN

In fairness, I've worked at several places that engaged in this practice, and they're perfectly clear that they're paying for clicks that they'd likely get for free.

The theory is that if they don't do this, their competitors buy this ad space and steal some of their organic traffic, and/or that they're just bidding up the cost of that space to make their competitors less efficient.

Now, that theory may not be cost-efficient in practice. But it's not like the marketers didn't understand that someone searching for the name of our app were going to see it in the list anyway.

That theory can easily be tested by turning off the ads in question and seeing what actually happens. Can always turn them on again later if needed.

Ebay did this 7 years ago, not sure how it turned out though https://hbr.org/2013/03/did-ebay-just-prove-that-paid

Would you be willing to make that decision knowing full well that it could reduce revenue that is 100% traceable to that decision? I mean, obviously there are ways to make this politically acceptable in your organization, but you better be completely confident that it won’t bite you in the ass.

You can just turn the ads off in one small geography and/or for a short time. Seems to me the potential benefits far outweigh the risks here. If your organization can't see that, then you have bigger problems.

Google Ads also has a built in report for seeing uplift of ads + organic and organic only

I'd take that report with a big grain of salt and run my own tests independently. Google is more than slightly biased here.

You’ve got a point. Plus attribution modeling isn’t for the faint of heart.

One popular method is a geolocation test. Turn off the test campaign (usually remarketing) in certain geos and see what happens.

Exactly what I suggested earlier... see my other comment reply.

The solution to this would be to have a very authoritative site for a query show above any ads.

If the company ranking results and selling these ad spaces are the same every decision will not be in case of advertisers/users. Google has long lost it‘s spirit and is only optimizing for money.

DHH of Basecamp had a long twitter thread about this. Their competitors bought “basecamp” as a keyword for google ads, effectively forcing basecamp to pay to stay #1 on searches for basecamp.

Google has/had no policies restricting this, unless of course, you guessed it, the keyword you are squatting is “google”.

This being allowed shows the sad state Google is in - you search for a brand, get ads for a competitor? Search engine, my ass. You now effectively need to pay Google to keep your product relevant through ads, even when the user is specifically looking for you.

If I search "Kleenex", am I specifically looking for the Kimberly Clark product or should Procter & Gamble be allowed to bid on ads for that search?

Certain types of product have become directly linked to a product name, yes. Google is smart enough to know this, though. If I google for my non VC funded product name, which is unique, why should the first result be for a direct competitor with deep pockets in advertising?

This would be fine if Google embraced their dependance on ads, but Google still labels itself as a “search engine”.

Isn't this more of a protection for established players? ie if your product is a GitHub alternative, should you be allowed to buy ads targeting ppl who search for Github to build awareness?

If I search "Kleenex" on Google, I'm asking Google to find me Kleenex, not some ads. If Google is going to start listing things in highest-to-lowest bid, then it stops being a search engine and starts becoming an auction house of links.

It already is an auction house of links. I think you have to go down at least 6 or 7 links nowadays for actual search results.

With google specifically, I've always wondered if the placement of the listing itself is related to the ad spend.

Isn't it "take away the ad" and Google will put first a ad link to a competitor instead?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com