Google Product Search is now for paying advertisers only – free product related search results are no more. Instead merchants will bid to have their products displayed above organic search results.
By making a fundamental change in the way they operate, Google is tampering with the Internet ecosystem that they helped to build. Google might have built up our Internet ecosystem virtually single-handedly, but it’s no longer the only game in town.
Social media is putting up its hand and shouting “Play me coach“! Will businesses and marketers heed the call, or stick with the search giant they currently rely on?
If you’re not familiar with the latest changes being rolled out by Google, read these articles first for a bit of background information:
- How Google Product Search will affect small business SEO SEM strategies and how to cope
- How paid Google product search results affect the future of SEO and Internet marketing
How Google search and the Internet work prior to paid product search
Google search and the Internet ecosystem operate symbiotically, in a delicate balance of financial incentives driven by the demand for information online:
- Google needs to return high quality content to people using search
- Advertisers need to get their products and services in front of those people
- High quality content producers generate large amounts of targeted traffic
- Advertisers reward high quality content producers financially, setting up competition
- Google benefits because it has more high quality content to return
- High quality content producers benefit because they get financial rewards
- Advertisers benefit because they get their ads in front of the right people
- Users benefit because they get the high quality information they need
It’s a beautiful organic system driven by competition and financial incentives. But how will removing the financial incentive to create quality content around products and services affect business, SEO and marketing strategies online?
How paid Google Product Search affects the Internet ecosystem
Paid product search cuts out steps 3, 4, 5, and 6 from the list above, which basically decimates the Internet ecosystem.
By allowing advertisers to go directly to Google, the financial incentives to create high quality content are removed. Without those financial rewards, content creation will no longer be sustainable as a business practice.
Instead merchants can focus on effective ad bidding campaigns and designing high converting landing pages.
How paid product search affects more than product searches
You might argue that since Google Product Search only affects product related searches that this is all a storm in a teacup. I think paid product search affects every piece of content online. Here’s why:
- The majority of Web traffic originates with Google.
- Advertisers have to compete to sell their goods, so ad budgets will be adapted to cater for Google paid product search. Since budgets won’t magically grow, ads in third party content must decrease.
- Ad revenue will diminish regardless of whether or not the content subject matter is about products because advertisers are selling products.
In a nutshell, why should marketers advertise on a blog or website if they can go straight to Google? Yes, there might be scope to advertise on outstanding creative, and unique content, but fundamentally, advertisers have to compete at the point of origin of traffic more fiercely. Otherwise, they will simply lose out to competitors who do compete well on paid product search.
Why paid product search is bad for Google
While most people can’t tear their eyes off the mind boggling amounts of revenue Google is set to make from paid product search, that money is being diverted from… everyone else on the Internet.
Google thrives today because it is a platform from which businesses can create wealth. But in one single, momentous decision, they are doing an about turn and saying “Google is now a platform from which we [Google] can create wealth“.
It’s fair enough, in my opinion. They did all the work to build up this most excellent tool for cataloging and returning information. They don’t owe the world anything, and I wholeheartedly support them in all their endeavors.
But by removing the financial incentive to create content they are effectively white-anting or eroding the engine that drives their success.
What Google has failed to take into account is that the Internet is a bigger place than them, they are merely its gatekeeper. As we’ve seen time and time before, the Internet is not sentimental. As soon as something is no longer of value, it dies, and Google may not be immune to this effect.
How the Internet will adapt without Google
By claiming the lion’s share of the search advertising pie, Google will force entire industries to find alternatives. People are resourceful. They can’t stop Google from implementing paid product search, but they can stop creating content for Google and using search as their point of origin.
With less content being created, and less people obsessing over their Google search rankings, because there is less at stake, Google itself will start to become less relevant. [gasp, shock, horror]
But where will people go?
Meet search’s kid brother, social media
Social media is already big business. Not quite in the same league as search, but it’s a nascent technology for marketers and business, and everyone’s still finding their feet. What social media needs is for something to really encourage people to start using it for business – hmmm, let me think!
Business and marketers will start migrating to the social media equivalent of organic search. Instead of PageRank, we’ll use social influence. Instead of traffic, we’ll use followers. Instead of bounce rates, we’ll have engagement, and so the list goes on.
Search will always be relevant to the Internet and business. And right now it may be hard to imagine an Internet that is not dominated by search, because that’s how it’s always been. But it’s not written in stone that the Internet must work the way it does. Google would do well to remember that… and consult me next time they decide to drop a bomb like this :)
What do you think? Is your business already bidding on Product Search? How’s it going? Are you worried that big budget brands are going to wipe out smaller businesses? What are we going to do with the tented camps of out-of-work content marketers?
Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments… and good luck with 2012.
Sign the petition asking Google not to do this, here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/merchant-center-keep-google-merchant-center-part-of-organic-search
This change will greatly hurt the economy by negatively impacting small businesses. Further, it will make Google’s product results biased and useless. People use Google Product Search to get the best deals on items. This will force an increase in end user pricing, for any merchant who even dares to compete with the big players. Inevitably, the small businesses which drive the US economy will be squeezed out by their inability to financially compete with the heavy hitters. This change is bad for Google, bad for consumers, bad for small businesses and bad for the US economy.
For the first time, Google has fundamentally undermined it’s motto “Don’t be evil”.
Profits will soar the next couple years, but I agree this marks ‘the beginning of the end’, because now I don’t trust them.
Google has been taking over the net and obviously now feel they are big enough to do what they want. Vote with your feet people, use social media, bing, yahoo etc. WE made google what it is, WE can take them down.
Don’t forget step 8. That seems like it will be sh*t canned in the process too…
As a content creator, I’m wondering how this will affect my business personally? If no one needs me anymore, I’ll have to start cleaning toilets for a living!
It was hard to compete without paid search, now that search is paid it will certainly kill all small businesses and we will migrate to greener pastures. Their lame excuse that says now publishers will invest more in content? Why? It’s a question of ROI, AdWords never worked for ecommerce sites, we simply can’t afford listing thousands of products, as Google Product Search used to offer, and there are alternatives out there, Social media is just one, but the way I see it, conversions from Social media ecomerce platforms have been poor. We don’t have deep pockets so we ad to target our hard earned dollars to where they matter most!
Google are neglecting the main driving force of their business – the end consumer of their services. If they lose the consumer’s trust – they have lost their business, and the sooner they realise this, the better. By the consumer I do not mean a paid advertiser, but people who do searches every day. Once their trust in Google’s integrity is gone, and they understand that their interests are no longer protected by an impartial organic search results, they will vote by abandoning Google and going to Google’s competition. I do not want to go search for something and end up with a bunch of paid ads in my search box!
Google seems determined to try to become the next AOL or Yahoo! and marginalise itself.
Its search engine is already delivering worse results than ever, to say nothing of all the clutter it delivers as well.
I’ve started using Wikipedia and Bing for most of my search requirements as I find what I need more easily.
If the rumours that either or both of Amazon and Facebook are planning to launch their own search engines, Google could fall off its prime position more rapidly than might be imagined…
Will it just be a case of who has the most money win, less completion always brings poorer quality
I’m dumping my google stock. Their searches on
mobile phones is so rigged, they are practically worthless
on that interface. Life is not over on Goggle.
It’s time for us to organize and produce a very large
advertising campaign to the public to boycott Google
for searchers to go elsewhere.
We need a national organization for affiliates
and web marketing professionals. If you think
Facebook has violated privacy, it’s nothing
compaired to Google which ensnares all that
information practically under the radar.
At least we could see most of what Facebook was doing
and knew to watch out for the boy CEO’s ethical challenges.
This will only marginally help Google’s revenue and in some respects could make it worse. Realistically, Google Adwords customers will just allocate a portion of thier add budget to Product search so you are not going to see a huge increase in revenue from it, just a canabilization of their existing adwords budget.
This now actually makes shopping.com, shopzilla, nextag and pricegrabber more competative since the carts I set my clients up on can generate feeds for those engines, not just google.
I think this is a short sited move by Google but the other shopping engines should be quite happy including the free ones like TheFind and others.
Trust is certainly a factor here, can we trust the paid product searches?? If the trust is killed, then it looks like Google is trying to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
You Guys ever hear of GoTo.com. Probably not! From what I read and forgive me if I am mistaken, I assume that
most of you have less than 5 years Internet experience.
Post Yahoo! Goto.com was the best place to search on the web until purchased by Overture. Then they combined
it with Yahoo and ruined it.
GoTo.com was 100% paid listings and it was great. Prices where low, clicks many, ROI was incredible, and
competition was well competition.
(Rick)”AdWords never worked for ecommerce sites,”
“we simply can’t afford listing thousands of products”
I do not know who managed your paid advertising, but fire them and get someone new. Obviously either your
products are horrible or the wrong people are marketing them.
If you are a small business and you can not compete using Google paid searches now, then the wrong people are
running your marketing campaigns.
Currently on most of the search engines only about 5-10 ads per page are paid? If the entire page is full
paid ads, I can get my clients on the front page for pennies per click where now it costs dollars.
I see the prices decreasing as the space for ads increases. Thess changes will increase competition NOT
decrease it.
How many of people communicating here actually run 5 or more adwords campaigns in different niches? How many
of these campaigns operate with minimum bids over $1, over $5, over $10, over $20 per click?
More paid product spots will be a blessing to the smart small businesses. The freebie people can stay on
Yahoo and all the other marginalized sites. (Christoper) BTW Yahoo is still a player and their ad program is
getting better and better. Yahoo is just a different niche of people.
From reading your posts above, most of you do not even know how the current system functions and how this
will benefit those of us that do.
“impartial organic search results,” (Galina St George) What makes you think that? The organic results are
by no means impartial. I have been training people since the late 90′s to manipulate these “impartial search
engines”. Pay Per Click levels the playing field. Especially if Google keeps using the same algorithms that
are currently in place.
In the past 6 months, 5 new Google Adwords accounts (that I manage, but did not develope the site) were NOT
approved because they did not meet Google policy of standards. Google is actually viewing each and every
site one at a time. This is not done with organic. Anybody with half my knowledge with SEO and the time to
implement it can force their page to number one on any organic search engine.
“Will it just be a case of who has the most money win, less completion always brings poorer quality” NO!
(Karl) the person/company with the most money will not win. They might have the number one position, but that
is all the space they get. These changes will bring more competion. More ad space increases competition it
does not decrease it.
If the current minimum first page bid is $2 and there are only 10 ad spots, then what will the minimum first
page bid be if there are 20 spots? 10 cents? 25 cents? $1? This looks like the price of competing is going
down.
Since the author of this article did not provide many references for the subject of this article, just links
to other misleading and short sighted articles. I see why the furor about this change, is such a worry to
everyone. Google is far from having a monopoly on searches. How about focusing on the positive effects of
this change. Someone please post a few articles showing the positive side of this change.
Maybe Google will go out of business and one of my sites or one of your sites will take googles place. While
a high percentage of people do use Google, if Google starts messing up, people will change where they
advertise and where they search. Bing is picking up speed.. I already changed my default search and homepage
to BING.com Love those images.
All traffic on the Internet is derived from the browser (not a search engine). I beleive it was June 1997
when netscape changed the way their browsers redirected to web sites. No longer could you type in a word and
the .com be automatically added and you sent to the site, but instead you were sent to the netscape search
page.
I personally lost tens of thousands of dollars in revenue the first day of the change. Netscape wanted
25cents per click with a minimum deposit of $25k. Just to be on the search results page. This was a lot of
$s for the traffic they redirected that I was getting for FREE. The redirect was theirs to take. They took
it by changing the functionality of the free software they supplied. Then in August 1997 IE did the same
exact thing, becuase it was profitable. That is what businesses do, profit….
This is GOOGLE RIGHT TO CHANGE THEIR FREE SERVICES HOW EVER THEY DESIRE!
Next came the search bars. Do you know how many people have NO idea what the address bar is and instead use
the search bar to get to web sites. My most common call for new domain purchases and/or new web site
launches is “WHere is my site? I typed it in the browser” and (google or yahoo) “say not found” or “it is
not on the page”. They are using the search bar. I have to educate them how to use the address bar to type in
their domain name to get to their site. (Until it is indexed, then they go back to the search bar) To many
people think google or even yahoo is the only way to find their site.
If you are using Google alone, then you are part of the problem. Branch out! Hunt me down I will show you
how to make good money from these changes!
AE
products are horrible or the wrong people are marketing them.
“If you are a small business and you can not compete using Google paid searches now, then the wrong people are
running your marketing campaigns.”
Nobody runs my marketing campaigns because PPC had been ALWAYS a terrible experience. There is no budget aside, we did some experiments that turned out to be awful. Make listings for thousands of products, were they compete just on price, with really tight profit margins, leaves no room for error either it has a good ROI or not. In our case it didn’t. We are trying to use as much non-paid listings as we can find, AdWords is out of the question. We have seen the bids on the industries we wanted to promote. Online there is a war, we have seen advertised prices for less than our cost! and we know those prices are not realistic, as it is, we probably move in other direction. We can’t afford paying anybody without granting results … That’s the way it is …
AEHageman speaks a lot of truth in his comment, be it rather long winded. Yes nobody likes change and a lot of people will be scared of what Google does or does not do but I guarantee you new opportunities not even thought off will appear and then we will all think how awful it would be to return to how it once was.
People will still make content but they will focus on making it shareable rather than keyword based. So I disagree with some of the logic but agree with the end conclusion.
it’s al labou tpolitics.. hav eyou seen a sign on the dolar bills? new word order? who are they? these are big corparations who will rule the word.. G on eof them.. they dont care abou t small biz, they wantto kill them with purpose… becaus eat th eend of the day regular searches woul dgo to G and do serach.. and find that top 10 results belong to google… as now it’s belong to ebay or other big corops.. small biz already kicked out… but americans stil llive their american drim.. what can i say,, go on peoiel til you see yourself in slavary..
I’ve spent the past year building a new, legitimate small business and a new life for myself based around a very well-optimized Google Products feed and the acquisition of quality distributors for quality products.
This has been a transformational process for me, and my quality of life has improved dramatically as being successfully self-employed helped me conquer alcoholism and a destructive lifestyle.
Google is not only fucking over my business, but quite possibly throwing a serious monkey wrench into my lifestyle and recovery process.
So, thanks for that, Google. You’re being more evil about this than imaginable. You might as well start charging everyone a nickel per query to use your search engine, for how hamhanded this choice is. You are fundamentally fucking us over, and it WILL have consequences, whether intended, anticipated or otherwise.
Where are people going?
The entire pay per click model was doomed from the start. It’s inevitable that information overload (especially advertising overload) and seriously poor returns (1% – 3%, which is ridiculous) will force people and businesses to inverse the search process. People will say what they need, and companies will respond.
Inverse the search process: Inverse search.
The problem that Google faces is its market is going to shrink further in coming years as all kinds of search engines emerge using a lot of social data that’s out there or other platforms – Siri, Facebook. Niche search engines like Duck Duck Go with its emphasis on privacy are also taking a chunk of the technical market. Don’t look at Google’s market share with Android as their salvation, they’re not making real money on that. I think that the idea of getting this structured data is what is so appealing to Google and why they’re putting so many resources behind Google+. Without access to structured social data, Google can’t continue to refine their search experience further. With access to this social data, Facebook has a legitimate shot of competing in search by using this social data to fuel their search experience. Facebook has captured the attention of the popular culture in addition to businesses: look at how many active users Facebook has, look at how many big brands are promoting their Facebook pages in their TV commercials, look at how many companies their are at http://www.buyfacebookfansreviews.com that do nothing other than promote Facebook pages…Facebook is really on the right track here even if they deserve a bit of criticism over some of their features. I think that the reason that Facebook is worth well in excess of their stock price is that they have the potential to dominate search, ecommerce, and other major fields. But this market is so big and valuable that I think there’s room for other players to get involved here and take some risks and chances that big companies like Facebook and Google won’t take.