> 'Ranking' on Google is very much a pay to play kind of thing these days with their page layout
Could you expand on this? Are you referring to how AdWords content is visually privileged over organic search results?
Could you expand on this? Are you referring to how AdWords content is visually privileged over organic search results?
An interesting experiment is to look at every link on the search results page and try to figure out how many don't generate cash for Google, its getting harder to find more than one, yet when Google was started it only profited from the ad-links.
As others have mentioned search has changed. There is no longer a big push for 'finding things on the web' which was the appeal of early search engines, now the bulk of the web use search as their portal to a giant reference library and product catalog. One of the things Google tried to monetize and failed was reference information (Knol) so now more and more they just show you the fact you were looking for, scraped from some web page, right on their page, no need to click away.
I think it was a smart move on their part from the shareholder perspective (disclosure I sold all my Google stock at $650 :-(). The second order effects though will be interesting. You see if Google becomes just a catalog, sort of like SkyMall "Magazine" in airplane seats, then it risks losing all of its unique utility. I'm certain that Microsoft can construct an equally compelling catalog as can Yahoo. This will shape the future for them.
On the other hand, Google also provides much more value in search than before. When I travel to a city I can go to Google maps and visualize my destination and find a hotel near by. Navigation is useful, we are perfecting it since thousands of years and Google is really good at it.
As for advertising, it has it's place (like when I'm traveling) and somehow Google got good at showing it to me when I need it.
It's sad that they are the only player to provide this kind of value from a backup perspective, but I don't see a credible alternative to them. And they do contribute back to the community, so I can't even fault them in that respect.
Now maybe there is a point that advertisement is a kind of manipulation and they are brain washing you plus spying on your every move. But if there is one thing I learned it's that nobody cares what you want to say. Algorithms don't frighten me for every day searches (you want to know I search for Ubuntu and Python 3? be my guest!).
I also use add-block and intuitively ignore the highlighted search results in (which sometimes confuses me, as the thing I search is in there). I hate ads for stuff I don't care about or even dislike and add-block is good with that.
Maybe that's why they are so successful, they computed what to show me when I'm looking for it and keep the crap away otherwise..
http://www.ted.com/talks/alessandro_acquisti_why_privacy_mat...
My search was: jwt web toolkit
The search page itself had no Google ads on it.
The top link was the homepage for the toolkit project. There were no ad links on the page.
The second and third links were for wikipedia, which contained no Google ads.
The fourth link did have Google ads on it. The fifth and sixth lengths did not. The seventh link did.
I tried again with a different set of search terms: neutron spin echo
The top of the page did contain a link to Google Scholar, followed by three links to pay walled articles. I am not aware of any profit agreement between Google and the publishers, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that it's there.
The remaining links were either to pages containing no advertising (Google or otherwise) or to more pay walled articles. Short of Google have a relationship with the publishers, Google again made no money on this search.
For the record, I don't have an ad-blocker turned on, so I would see ads if they were there.
How about "playstation 4" for example?
Seems pretty reasonable.
I guess the main place where I was unfair to the parent was his comment that not recognizing his comment that:
>There is no longer a big push for 'finding things on the web' which was the appeal of early search engines, now the bulk of the web use search as their portal to a giant reference library and product catalog.
I do use it as a reference library, but almost never as a product catalog. I imagine that, if I used Google to search for things to buy, there would be far more ads, but that forms a negligible part of my internet usage.
A query like "LA Car Rental" will give you an idea of what the parent post describes.
If you want to stick closer to the tech niche, try "build iphone app". Even the query "java profiler" gets me four ads on the page.
Assuming you don't actually want to rent a car in Los Angeles (or maybe if you do), you will get much more entertaining results by adding a little qualification, e.g., "LA Car Rental scams".
From the end user side this one is particularly frustrating. Google Shopping has gone from being an incredibly valuable tool when I was looking to make a purchase to being practically worthless. I don't even bother with it anymore.
I think the main thing is whether Google can monetize the relevant results, without letting in the irrelevant ones.
I work for an online retailer, and we pretty much show up in all the places we always have, except that now we are paying for more of those spots. Some of our organic search results have fallen off a bit as Google emphasizes larger brand names, but I imagine they'll pick up via their Trusted Stores initiative or whatever the next monetization scheme is.
You can see an article by Danny Sullivan from this summer here: http://searchengineland.com/google-results-too-ad-heavy-1662...
And this is great breakdown of the various types of results Google is providing these days: http://moz.com/blog/mega-serp-a-visual-guide-to-google
I usually go find my laptop.