WebProNews

Tag: search experiments

  • Is This A Promise Google Should Be Breaking?

    Brands may soon be getting even more love from Google as the company is reportedly testing big banner-style imagery on ads on brand-specific search results pages.

    Do you think these visually-branded ads on search results pages would improve the search experience? Let us know what you think in the comments.

    Synrgy shares what it looks like in a tweet:

    Search Engine Land has confirmed with Google that the test is legit, but is only a small test in the U.S. There’s no telling if this will amount to an actual feature. Google conducts 20,000 of search experiments every year.

    Google reportedly told Synrgy that the experiment was only happening with about 30 advertisers and showing for less than 5% of queries. They also learned that only the banner itself is an add, while all the sitelinks are just part of the organic results.

    If it does become a wide-reaching feature, however, it obviously adds a tremendous amount of branding to the search results page. If it does expand to an available ad format, it will be interesting to see if it stays limited to brand-specific queries. As we’ve been seeing, Google has been giving brands some extra visibility even on generic queries.

    In some cases, they’re recommending specific brands with the “see results about” feature when the users enters generic queries. Here’s an example showing a search for “travel insurance,” which suggests you search for the top advertiser on the page.

    Travel insurance

    But back to the banner-style ads in question. Google is taking some flack in the press for going back on a promise it made years ago. Google said this in 2005:

    There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.

    I think this probably qualifies as a graphical doodad on a search results page, so it would seem that “ever” was a bit of a stretch. That said, the above quote was made in context with a partnership between Google and AOL when they announced a global advertising deal. The statement was also made by Marissa Mayer, who is obviously now at Yahoo.

    Google had invested $1 billion for a 5% stake in AOL, and expanded a strategic alliance to make more of AOL’s content available to Google users. The companies had first partnered three years before that. Google would continue to provide search technology to AOL, and the AOL Marketplace was created with white labeling of Google’s ad tech, enabling AOL to sell search ads directly to advertisers on AOL-owned properties. It also extended display ads throughout Google’s network and made AOL’s content “more accessible to Google web crawlers.”

    You can see the full announcement here.

    What Mayer was saying in the post, which was aimed to clear up “misconceptions” about the partnership was that the deal would not result in Google putting banner ads on its search results. And it didn’t.

    But things have changed a lot with Google in the past eight years. Google doesn’t even have the same CEO anymore.

    Still, she did say “ever.”

    But again, it’s just a small test. Who knows if it will even become anything more?

    In related news, Google added ad extensions as a ranking factor in Ad Rank, while also giving Ad Rank itself more weight.

    Would you like to see Google push out these banner ads to a bigger group of advertisers? To all advertisers? Let us know what you think in the comments.

  • Auxiliary Search? New Google Search Feature Spotted In The Wild

    Is Google about to make it easier for users to find relevant information without ever leaving the search page?

    Reddit user philosyche just spotted what looks like an experimental Google search feature in the wild. Considering it’s legit, the feature would continue Google’s push to provide more direct answers in search results, something that has far-reaching implications for websites around the world.

    The new feature throws relevant information about a query into the white space on the right side of the page. In this screenshot, you can see that a search for “The Beatles” shows a quick summary, along with information about some of their top songs and albums, as well as related searches.

    As you can see, there are plenty of links in this “auxiliary” (my word, not Google’s, obviously) search. The basic biographical info on the band comes from Wikipedia. There are links to specific songs and albums – possibly to Google Play? The related search links would obviously open up new Google searches.

    The reddit user who posted this screencap to the Google subreddit now says that this is gone from their search results. Could it be a rolling update? A search experiment?

    If so, will it only show up for a certain type of query like bands or films?

    As we told you last week, Google runs upwards of 20,000 different search experiments every year – only a fraction of which ever make it to real Google users. Matt Cutts recently said that in 2009, only 585 of these changes ever made it to prime time.

    A feature like this doesn’t seem strange at all, considering Google’s rumored strategy of providing users with more direct answers within search results. You know what I’m talking about – when you search something like “Easter 2012” or “The Dark Knight Rises release date,” here’s what you’l see at the top:

    Of course, this is all considering that the screencap is real. Personally, I don’t see anything like this when I search for The Beatles. Does anybody else see this new feature? Let us know in the comments.