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Oh wow..

From my point of view the point here is the "Chinese Wall"[1] that used to exist between organic results and paid advertising.

That used to be clearly defined, and the trust that came from that was one of Google's strengths.

The way the "Sponsored" result hides the organic result for [Southwest Airlines] (by scrolling it off the page) makes that wall redundant - effectively Google is being paid for any click there. Or that's what I think anyway: your comment "the navigational ad and the first organic result are combined" makes me think that Google is actually combining paid and organic results without labelling them separately at all. In that case the "Chinese Wall" is gone completely.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall

To me, it just looks like southwest paid money to put a picture on top of the (awesome, IMO) google provided first result and deep links into relevant sections of the first result site.

I'm always pleasantly surprised when I search for a site and get nav links into it's main sections, because it's invariably much easier to navigate than the site's own navigational system. I have no problem letting Google sell a little extra space above this nav section, especially since it only seems to appear when the result returned are related predominantly that that first site. I.e. Google doesn't appear to be doing this for the search "airlines", but does as soon as the search is definitive enough to identity a specific airline.

The issue as I see it is that when I click on an ad, I'm not just clicking on another link, I'm adding a bunch of extra cookies to my browser that now track my experience and try to target me even more. By removing the organic search result you've essentially given me no choice, now I HAVE to click on the cookie generating link, and I HAVE to deal with all that fall out, I might begin searching with Private Browsing because of this, at least then I know that all cookie are destroyed at the end of the session...

I'm very against getting targeted results because it destroys creativity and discovery. It used to be that when I watched a video on youtube when the video was over I'd get a bunch of related videos that were concerned with the same topic (whatever that was) now instead I see links to past videos I've watched that I'm simply not interested at the moment, basically thanks to google's attempt to make me stay on the site longer I usually only watch the video that brought me there before leaving because I'm not interested in watching cat videos or whatever nonsense I watched once but now is appearing next to the videos like a bad non sequitur.

And finally for my last rant: Why did google begin hiding their product from me? it used to be that all their products were prominently displayed at the top of the page, now if I want to use a different product I need to click a non-obvious icon and then scroll to find the product that I want to use, which UX guy came up with this?

All of the links off google.com (including organic ones!) actually redirect you through a google server to:

1. track which one you clicked

2. remove the referer (sic.) field so that the target website doesn't know what search terms you used

Also, you should consider using the Chrome App Launcher for Windows and Mac OS X.

"I don't know why a company buys ads for navigational queries where it's already the top result, but they do, and I'd argue it's bad for users."

I preach to my local clients that they want to be in the "map pack", in the organic results AND on AdWords to get the full benefit from Google searches .. even "navigational" searches or searches where they are already #1.

One reason is easy to understand (consumers see your brand in not 1 but 3 places).

But the secondary reason is s direct result of Google favoring or placing paid ads above organic results. If you sell "blue widgets" and rank #1 organically for that term your competitors can still buy ads and rank above you because Google places those ads before the organic results.

Don't want people buying ads for searches where they are already #1? Reduce the prominence of your top ranking ads so that brands don't feel "forced" to do so just to stay competitive.

Giving people a shortcut around organic rankings and being surprised when brands then want to be in both places is kind of ridiculous.

Disclaimer: Search Marketer

Advertisers see incremental value in advertising on their brand traffic for many reasons including directing traffic, controlling messaging, etc. plus in some cases have seen incremental gains in brand traffic. See this blog post for more details.

http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/the-cardinal-sin-of-paid-sea...

Therefore what is interesting to me about combining a paid brand banner ad and organic links is the limited control the advertiser has in directing their brand traffic or controlling the copy whether the headline or site links. They also lose the ability to report on that traffic as paid brand traffic which is probably fine to the advertiser as the traffic is then reflected as a corresponding increase in organic.

Again to spankalee's point it is an experiment so I am sure the functionality will develop over time.

Any bets this is Google's second step towards a kind of Facebook page? (First step was the right-side card)

Maybe Google should just add an (opt in?) option to advertisers: if you're the top result, and would normally have an ad on the page -- we don't show any ads but charge for the click on the regular result.

That way you still can't rank #1 by paying for it, but Google gets to present a better UI to the users (less redundant information - less confusion).

edit: On a related note - what's the average revenue per user for Google search -- or how much would they have to charge for an ad-free version? (Ok, that probably wouldn't work, every "ad-free" user would devalue the market for ads) -- but still -- how well would a 10USD/year ad-free Google experience sell? Surely that's much higher than average income per user/year in ads?

10 USD is not enough I am afraid.

Google had an ad revenue of 31 billion USD [1] on all Google sites, the biggest part of which is from search (but I can't find the exact number right now). Now there are about 2 billion [2] internet users worldwide (not all of which are Google users - e.g. China) ... Since about 50% of Google revenues comes from the US, the revenue per user in the US is even higher. I don't think this is going to work.

Also take into account the overhead: people who pay generally want support. And then take into account that you could already get this for free if you use an ad blocker. I don't think if most people don't mind ads enough to install an ad blocker, they sure as hell won't pay for an ad free version.

[1] http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html

[2] http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

"On the [Southwest Airlines] query you can see that there's no redundant ad anymore - the navigational ad and the first organic result are combined. Calling that whole box and ad, when it contains the same content that the former top organic result used to, is misleading, but makes for a much more sensational headline when you want to claim that most of the screen is ads."

Calling that result an "organic search result" is also misleading, more so than calling it an "ad" considering that it is visually dominating the results page.

Would a fairer headline be "Google experimenting with selling search result placement"?

So if it's illogical for companies to buy ad space on queries for which they are the top result...why would they (presumably) fork over even more money to have an attractive banner ad? If a user is searching explicitly for Southwest Airlines...which seems to be the most conceivable non-sinister scenario to show the SA banner ad...how does it help the company or the user to have the interface suddenly change?

Maybe the answer is, "Well, because companies --and their marketing people -- are dumb like that, so, if they want to throw money at us..." Still, seems like it adds more complexity to both the backend logic and the front-end, while at the same time, harming opposing viewpoints. For example, Scientology is the first organic result for a search for "scientology" and thus deserves the opportunity to have a banner ad. And yet the banner ad as presented by the OP would push Scientology's apparently-well-SEOptimized opponents well below the fold.

(not to pick on Scientology, it's just the one religion/group example in which its opponents are almost as well known as the organization itself)

Maybe they redesigned their landing page, and it is no longer top for organic results for a search term they practically own, e.g., [Virgin America]?

Who cares? The stock is over 1K now!!!