Google Search is only 18% Search

http://blog.jitbit.com/2012/09/googles-serp-is-only-25-serp.html

by jitbit • 14 years ago

231 188 14 years ago

blog.jitbit.com

seanconaty2• 14 years ago

To be fair you should factor whitespace out when you're calculating the area.

In the recent screen capture all the whitespace is added to the non-search results.

In the not-so-recent results there is a fair amount of whitespace added to the search results (as well as non-search).

jitbit• 14 years ago

I honestly thought about cutting all the white space completely, but then after having a chat with our designer... He said that every page is visually divided into blocks (even if there are no explicit visual borders of these blocks), subjectively, of course. This, the "F-pattern" and "left-to-right" orientation for the most of us brought us to an agreement that the last screen was ok... The subjective "blocks" are somewhat like this.

But I agree, I shouldve been more precise

seanconaty2• 14 years ago

That makes some sense; sort of defining what the whitespace is "devoted" to.

condiment• 14 years ago

I noticed this as well. The older search results have the same width as the new results.

It's also interesting to note that the old results page is displaying multiple results for single domains using result nesting, while the new results page displays only one listing for each domain. The end result is that the same number of 'effective search results' are displayed on the page for both versions.

The gradual transformation of white space into content is a natural evolution in the life of any web product. While the feature set is simple, the design can be sparse. Mature products benefit from rich feature sets, with the drawback of having to sacrifice the sparse visual design that may have initially distinguished them from the competition.

slaven• 14 years ago

Aaron Wall has documented the decline of organic search very well over the years. Worth checking out: http://www.seobook.com/the-sales-engine

state• 14 years ago

This seems to me to be a similar kind of evaluation that Google would do on its own work. Nice angle.

WestCoastJustin2• 14 years ago

I've been using Adblock+ for the last 6+ years. Granted the 13.8m users [1] are a drop in the bucket compared to googles non Adblock+ viewers. I was a little shocked to see this post as it is much different than what I see.

For the search "saas help desk" (https://www.google.ca/#hl=en&q=saas+help+desk)

I see: http://imgur.com/xMB6t

They see: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5Vq-qWuUPZE/UER9ChRkKQI/AAAAAAAAAd...

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/

shawndumas• 14 years ago

wow -- just installed Adblock+. the experience was a lot like finally progressing far enough in my career to not have to wear a tie; i feel freed from bondage...

jQueryIsAwesome• 14 years ago

They are being good guys about it; they could easily block all "Ad-Blockers" and ask you to disable the adblocker to continue (as some sites already do).

mike-cardwell• 14 years ago

You underestimate the ingenuity of geeks. If Google decided to prevent people from using Ad-blockers, 24 hours later a new Ad-blocker would be released to get around it, or the existing ones would be updated.

jlarocco• 14 years ago

Actually, there's no way to really block ad-block.

It wouldn't be too hard to make an ad-blocker that used CSS and Javascript to do all of the blocking during page render. It'd be an inefficient use of bandwidth and rendering time, but it'd be able to block 100% of ads and undetectable from the web server.

In fact, before Opera had a built-in ad-blocker, I think there was an ad-block extension built on its "User Javascript" and custom CSS abilities.

polshaw2• 14 years ago

There is another factor that people are ignoring for all the talk of technical possibilities...

Those who are minded to go out of their way to install something that blocks ads probably aren't very likely to click ads anyway.

They are also probably technology 'leaders' who help sites to bring in all the regular folk who do click the ads.

Google is probably the least likely company to lose users this way, but they have another factor that they want a good reputation with that community because they want to hire lots of them.

njharman• 14 years ago

If google becomes too annoying people will leave. There are alternatives.

tapp• 14 years ago

I think it's more a matter of simple customer segmentation (same principle behind outlet malls: charge price-insensitive customers a premium, without losing the price-sensitive but hassle-insensitive customers who are willing to schlep to the outlet mall for a discount.)

AdBlock allows Google customers to self-segment the same way. Win-win.

pwim• 14 years ago

Google makes money from people clicking on ads. I'd wager that people who install adblock, don't tend to click on ads, especially if you force them to disable it.

recuter• 14 years ago

Also about 14m users [1] of Ad Blockers for Chrome. Those numbers are nothing to sneeze at, I wonder how it will play out in a few years if more and more people default to no ads.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/popular

seanalltogether• 14 years ago

I expect eventually all ads will be routed through the domain of the site you are visiting, making domain blacklisting programs like AdBlock irrelevant.

rtkwe• 14 years ago

I was wondering what the author was going on about until I remembered Ad-block. It's still a very clean interface and the distinction between ads and search results is pretty clear. Doing a quick informal search, the terms that the author chose seems to be a large outlier in terms of numbers of ads.

perfunctory• 14 years ago

bing seems to be doing better in this regard.

barista2• 14 years ago

ok granted it is doing better by allocating more space to the search results. But how about the search result quality? How's it doing there?

stcredzero• 14 years ago

> Is Google becoming a Yahoo?

I suspect that all ad-revenue sites are subject to the same economic pressures. Almost all such companies eventually succumb to these pressures.

All such companies will tend to cater to the lowest common denominator. They will tend to put their own interests (that of showing ads and increasing ad effectiveness) over the interests of users.

Perhaps there is an opportunity for a paid integrated search/email/calendar/reminders/maps/events application? You pay them $5 or $10 per month, and they do their best to create the best possible experience for you. Apple and Microsoft are well positioned to become this company as well, as is Google.

Wouldn't it be ironic if Yahoo! became this company?

codeka2• 14 years ago

> Perhaps there is an opportunity for a paid integrated search/email/calendar/reminders/maps/events application? You pay them $5 or $10 per month, and they do their best to create the best possible experience for you.

You've just described Google Apps for Business (well, except for search).

tedunangst2• 14 years ago

The failure of A/B testing. More ads => more revenue. People won't abandon the site immediately just because a new ad or two showed up, like a slow boiling pot, so short term effects are always positive.

asr• 14 years ago

Just like the sesame-seed hamburger bun: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/09/11.html

(Though, personally, in this case, I don't think Google's getting enough credit. The added space for search tools is designed to make search better for most users, and probably do, even if most of us don't need them.)

mmackh• 14 years ago

I've had trouble staying focused when using Google a while back and decided to write a Chrome extension for improving the Google Search experience. Here's the URL for those interested: http://restfulpanda.com/post/25658805059/cleaning-google

EDIT:

Turns this: http://f.cl.ly/items/2y1F0d2d0a2K3L1n0Q2m/1.png

Into this: http://f.cl.ly/items/2P3B2c0X0V0Q3U0h3e3A/2.png

mistercow2• 14 years ago

A big improvement, but as with ad blockers, you still have search results crammed into a fairly narrow box. Obviously, you won't be able to get Google to show longer titles and descriptions, but you should be able to widen the box so that the two-line descriptions end up on one line, which would fit more results on each page.

mattmanser• 14 years ago

I just wish you could get it to expand rightwards and get the longer descriptions back, the amount of space they've wasted to 'integrate' G+ really annoys me.

kevinburke2• 14 years ago

This observation made the rounds at Google a few months ago. Note also it depends on the topic of your search. 3 ads in the yellow box are reserved for highly monetized queries - "flowers" or "car insurance" for example.

Queries about programming topics - "sinatra post parameters" is one I tried a few minutes ago - usually don't have ads.

barista2• 14 years ago

are the "highly monetized queries" queries also the most common queries?

sharkweek• 14 years ago

They can be -- but not necessarily. It has a lot to do with conversions. Someone searching "car insurance" or "cheap flights" is most likely on the hunt for something they are willing to pay for; while someone searching "football scores" is most likely just looking for free information.

Of course this doesn't even scratch the surface of running a site for ad revenue that provides free information to common search questions, e.g., "how do I change the oil in my car"

polyfractal2• 14 years ago

Not to be a shill for Duck Duck Go, but the amount of search information displayed is refreshingly dense:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=saas+help+desk

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=travel

WestCoastJustin2• 14 years ago

First time I have seen mapquest used anywhere other than mapquest.com.

limejuice• 14 years ago

I made duckduckgo.com my home page several months ago after I saw http://donttrack.us/, and it has been working fine. The presentation is nicer than google. I have AdBlock enabled, so I don't see the ads on either site.

I like the infinite scroll on duckduckgo; I have AutoPager plugin on chrome to get something similar with google.

lawdawg3• 14 years ago

http://www.google.com/search?q=saas+help+desk

How is DDG any better really?

polyfractal2• 14 years ago

I'm not bombarded by fifteen different ads, who are all trying to pretend like search results?

The results are hit or miss...I probably !g about half my queries. But the other half are entirely pleasant experiences and I'm hopeful DDG continues to get better.

mistercow2• 14 years ago

At first I thought "well, if you're using an ad blocker, it's different", but in Google's case, you just end up with white space instead of ads because the search results are still crammed into a 42em wide box. I wonder if there's a user script or chrome plugin to fix that.

fear91• 14 years ago

Some results are even worse. There were keywords where you could see only 7 organic results.

The rest was AdWords.

To make things worse, Google adds more and more "product search" results (paid placement).

With each day, there's less and less traffic for those people who don't pay Google. I suspect that the paid placement trend will increase until it is possible.

To make things worse, Google not only decreases the SERP "real estate". They also introduce frequent algorithm updates which tend to drop down websites which earn on search-engine traffic. Leaving those which may have lesser quality but don't earn on their traffic ( no monetization ). And if you do it to a million websites, you will gain quite a lot of new AdWords buyers. Some of them have to try your PPC ads. Let's say that 10% of them will try to get traffic out of PPC - now you've got yourself 100.000 paying customers.

It's obvious they want to force people both to buy and to click ads. They don't gain anything by sending free traffic to other affiliate websites ( which will then convert to sales/leads ).

The question is: Where do you draw a line between a search engine and an "ad engine"?

To many people, especially those less tech-savy, Google = Internet.

I personally think, it's pretty bad for the overall state of e-economy to have this one big mogul who administers the majority of targetted traffic. He wants his share of the pie from everyone. If you are too small to pay, fuck you. They don't need you. The consumer won't notice you are not in the search results, there are 50 other websites happy to take your place. Either you are at the top or you don't exist.

It'd be great if there would be something like Google but with a more "socialistic" approach. Instead of having a few websites occupying the top place, provide the traffic to other, smaller players. So the e-economy can expand more.

fpgeek2• 14 years ago

> Instead of having a few websites occupying the top place, provide the traffic to other, smaller players. So the e-economy can expand more.

How would you do that? Throw in some random numbers to shuffle the search results?

sologoub3• 14 years ago

In the image where you show the 18.5% organic footprint vs 81.5% ad footprint, you are lumping in a lot of page real estate used for navigation and search tools. The entire left hand side is not add related.

I'd be a more accurate/fairer way to represent the info by providing 3 categories: organic, ads, navigation/misc. If you did this, you'd provably see a closer to 40/60 split, still in favor of ads. Similar to what you showed in your screenshot from the past.

devcpp• 14 years ago

I looked for "81" in the page and found nothing. Apparently, he never said that 81.5% of the area is made up of ads. He may have edited it but I think his criticism was towards the unused space for results, not especially towards the ads.

And if that is the case, I must concur. I fail to understand why Google added a large side bar instead of adding more top bars in the unused space next to the logo (perhaps right under the search text box). The designers at Google may disagree but the Jitbit guy sure has a point.

sologoub3• 14 years ago

There is a graphic that shows 18.5% for the organic and 81.5% for the ads/rest of the area.

The main reason I disagree with the conclusion is that the area used by Google, or any other company for that matter, for navigation/other tools is hardly equivalent to space used for ads.

That in no way is intended to say that the space is used "efficiently".

waterlesscloud7• 14 years ago

He didn't go to Google looking for navigation, he went looking for the results of his search.

So the way he discusses the real estate devoted to fulfilling his purpose is quite reasonable.

jonknee• 14 years ago

Except you use the navigation to improve your search. No one wants a page completely full of organic results.

lawdawg3• 14 years ago

Until people show me that paid results aren't relevant (hint: they usually are), then most of the real estate is fulfilling his purpose.

Also, if Google decided to some how change to using 2 columns of organic search so they could squeeze 16 results into a single page, you'd hear just as much, if not more, complaining.

_xhok• 14 years ago

Arguably, from a design perspective, a wider column of text is harder to read than a narrower column of text. I personally find Google to be more legible than it was before at 53% result space. That's just me, though.

joestringer• 14 years ago

I'm not sure it is just you. Shorter columns are easier to read, which means it serves users even better; our eyes don't have to track a massive row of characters to see what the search result is.

jiggy20112• 14 years ago

Question for people more familiar with google ads that me:

I quite often type in a search term for something that I imagine must be a very common search term and I don't get any adverts whatsoever.

Does this mean that nobody has bid on this keyword (because it's too expensive?) or are some search terms simply not allowed to be advertised on?

jaredmck• 14 years ago

Some terms don't display advertisements - if the combination of relevance and google's profit potential on a specific query is not above a certain level (which is always changing I'm sure based on yield management and user data tests), then no ads will display for that query.

Most navigational queries fall into this class.

tiziano88• 14 years ago

By definition if no one has bid on the keyword, you can easily win the auction by bidding the minimum amount. It is likely that the terms you were searching for are not ideal targets for effective ads. Can you give an example of such query?

jiggy20112• 14 years ago

I can't remember which terms I searched when I discovered this, but I tried it just now.

"computer networking" yields 1 ad. "networking" yields no ads.

cryptoz• 14 years ago

The search in our isn't considered 'search'?!

redorb• 14 years ago

my version from about a year ago https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-CZONTO-54lo/Tno6O3aK56I/A...

lawdawg3• 14 years ago

For a query like "credit card", those non-organic results seem much more, if not just as, relevant than the organic results. Why do people assume that if it's an ad that it must be non-relevant? Advertisers wouldn't be advertising on these keywords unless they were converting a good percentage of users ... that means a good percentage of users are finding those links relevant.

I don't use AdBlock, don't really see the reason to as I find most of the search ads to be relevant whenever I'm searching for a term that actually shows search ads (which isn't really that often). Hate for search ads just because they are ads is kind of an odd imo ...

onetimeuse0014• 14 years ago

"For a query like "credit card", those non-organic results seem much more, if not just as, relevant than the organic results"

That's almost certainly on purpose to get better ad click ratio. Google manually inspects all major keywords, you can bet "credit cards," "mortgage" and "insurance" are tweaked and tweaked to Google's specification. Showing "bofa.com" when searching for mortgage isn't that useful to the average user, so people click on ads.

meritt2• 14 years ago

Can we please change the headline to something a bit less invalid and full of sensationalism? This is a perfect example of distorting statistics to serve ones purpose.

* Author has a small screen.

* Author compares results space vs everything else, and then calls it "ads"

On my 1920x1200 screen, overall ad space and results space actually take up the same amount of space. There's a ton of UI and white-space though. While Google could arguably make better use of their empty space, suggesting the remainder is entirely ads is absurd.

Screenshot with results in red and ads in blue: http://i.imgur.com/YTspx.png

Wilya• 14 years ago

> * Author has a small screen.

Author has a big screen. His screenshot shows five results above the fold. I can barely see two on my 1280x800.

The argument works both ways.

meritt2• 14 years ago

1280x960 is not a "big screen" by any modern definition.

Dylan16807• 14 years ago

The CRT I threw out years ago was 1280x1024. It wasn't big then, and a smaller screen isn't big now.

Even if you're on something like an iPad you still have 1024 vertical and end up with plenty of content. Only netbooks and/or low-quality screens have this issue.

typpo• 14 years ago

Is that actually so different from the way things used to be? If you run the example 2008 query, "open source social networking," the number of ads hasn't changed.

It seems like most of this complaint should be directed at the navigation sidebar to the left. I'd imagine Google tested the sidebar ad nauseam, though, and is leaving it there for a reason (probably increased engagement in other search products and more readily exposes advanced refinements).

polshaw2• 14 years ago

Ironically (or not) jitbit.com is a similar percentage of content above the fold, with almost identical content width.

I say 'or not', because there are well established readability reasons for having a narrow content width. Would many people genuinely prefer the google of the 2008 screenshot? The days of sites with full page width text are largely gone, and for good reason.

I'm sure google would also suggest that the ads are content.

msg• 14 years ago

What I use:

GoogleMonkeyR - a Greasemonkey that breaks SERP ads and instant search and allows you to format them to your liking.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/9310

mbarbir• 14 years ago

Google would apply a Panda-induced penalty to any website that followed a similar content strategy.

http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-now-...

It's good to be the king.

hcarvalhoalves• 14 years ago

The author is only analyzing content above the fold. There's no conclusion to draw from this, other than that Google used to cram more content above the fold, like all other sites.

logical422• 14 years ago

maybe google is just 82% advertising.

bhartzer• 14 years ago

Actually, doesn't the amount of advertising change based on the actual query used?

logical422• 14 years ago

that's actually a really interesting point and something which i had never really considered. googling 'computational linguistics' (for me anyhow) renders exactly zero ads, while googling 'computers' gives me almost an entire screenful.

aidenn0• 14 years ago

It seems to me that linear vertical space matters more than area. It still is small, but not as small. Showing ranked search results in multiple columns makes no sense, and screens have gone from 4:3 to 16:9,, so you would expect the extra area to be used for something other than search results.

xfs• 14 years ago

When you have enough vertical space, Google will screw your results with botched site crowding. See http://www.seroundtable.com/google-same-result-same-page-152...

I've had worse, because I wanted to have 100 results in a page.

AznHisoka• 14 years ago

This is something Aaron Wall has been trying to expose for the past 3-4 years over at SEOBook.com (why oh why are these SO few comments compared to SEOMoz everytime I visit there? this guy is NEVER afraid to speak the truth), and it's just 1 of many disturbing trends happening. Google's mission is simple: they want you to rely less on organic search and more on Adwords for your traffic.

Nowadays, you can't even see what keywords are driving traffic to your site if users are logged in (50% of queries or so). Plus it's hard to even correlated your SEO efforts with rankings because Google does stuff like drop your rankings randomly so you don't know what works.

TomGullen• 14 years ago

> Plus it's hard to even correlated your SEO efforts with rankings because Google does stuff like drop your rankings randomly

And therefore they would have to increase your rankings randomly as well?

cin_• 14 years ago

I almost pathologically click on the ads. If I hold down CTRL and click I am giving back more than is enough to receive such an amazing, life changing?, history changing?, service. Here's that click.

The room that is taken up by the left and right columns also are welcome. I sometimes find exactly what I am looking for in the right column. I actually wish Google gave more information and less site links as results.

azakai• 14 years ago

Related, I noticed a few days ago that google.com, which was once the most minimalistic page possible, was cluttered by (1) an ad for chrome on top, and (2) an ad for the Google tablet on the bottom. It felt messy.

Times have definitely changed.

calbear815• 14 years ago

"Only 18.5% of the screen is devoted to something that people are actually looking for."

Once again, people dismiss ads as simply spam or something that provides no value to the search query when in study after study, at least on Adwords and SEM, paid results often boost relevance vs. a page only of organic results. This will of course differ by query and category of query but Google has already done a lot of work to make sure ads don't show for queries that have little to no commercial value or do not have enough query volume to risk jeopardizing the search experience.

If you're shopping for something, the paid and Google shopping results are often more relevant than the organic results since a lot of them incorporate real time price feeds or promotion codes. These are driven by the recognition of your shopping intent

Advertisers do not bid on keywords that deliver no economic value so it's in their best interest to only show up when they are the most relevant to your query. Through quality score, AdWords also shows ads that have been engaged with most often and with strong landing pages so that you don't get spammy ads or irrelevant ads that are unrelated to your query.

waterlesscloud7• 14 years ago

This is a failure on Google's part, perhaps their most dangerous weakness.

calbear815• 14 years ago

Why is having a business model that generates billions of dollars in revenue annually, employs tens of thousands of people, and still allows you to maintain dominance considered a failure?

The ads platform is self-optimizing, punishing advertisers with poor ads, low relevance, and poor brand perception. This results in ads that are from more trustworthy sellers and whom generate real customer interaction to justify buying those ads. To me, this system encourages higher relevance in commerce queries because those who deliver the best user experiences after you leave Google are the ones that can afford to bid to the top of the ads marketplace.

codelion• 14 years ago

> when in study after study, at least on Adwords and SEM, paid results often boost relevance vs. a page only of organic results.

Can you point to some of those studies ?

calbear815• 14 years ago

The studies were not public and were part of research projects and relevance insights I had access to in prior positions.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

At Blekko.com we've looked into this, more of an a/b test driven model rather than a definitive survey, but one challenge is this, you send two pages to an unbiased observer (which is code for someone who didn't do the search, they are just looking at the search query and the results page and deciding which is 'better') the results will favor ads, but the meta issue is that the ads are curated, not algorithmic.

Specifically some person said "If someone searches for 'x,y, z' put my Ad up there" which is still much more accurate than an algorithm trying to guess. We do a game on our search page where if you put /monte at the end of your query we'll throw up the Google results, the Bing results, and the Blekko results. Then you get to pick the one that you, the searcher, thought was the best answer. We've found that well curated categories do really well in this comparison. Ads are simply a market motivated curation of Google's results.

coliveira• 14 years ago

People don't go to a search engine to look at ads, despite of what Google may say. Most everyone knows that half of these ads are scams, and the other half is of dubious precedence. People visit a search engine because they want to see organic results. For example, most people, as soon as they have enough technical ability, choose to install ad blockers to avoid losing their time with Google ads.

calbear815• 14 years ago

You're absolutely right, people don't go to search engines to look at ads: they go to search engines to find the most relevant answers to their queries. In many commercial query cases, the most relevant/useful links could be paid search links that an interested advertiser thinks is super-relevant to your query, enough so to actually put down money to pay for you to click over and see their site.

"Most everyone knows that half.." - I think that statements needs to be qualified because as far as I have observed, only tech people approach targeted Google ads with this much skepticism that 50% of ads are scams and 50% are dubious.

wangweij• 14 years ago

Correct. a search might show an ad which is highly relevant, but in most cases, the same link also appears in the search result, and I always click the one in the search result. Sometimes I am wondering if I should click the ad instead to let Google earn some money, but I am afraid the link contains strange parameters that would send information which I'm not willing to share.

mingramjr• 14 years ago

Are you sure about that? If I search for "plumber philadelphia", I'm looking at organic and paid sections of the results page. The results in the paid sections tend to be pretty solid. They are local plumbers taking the time out and spending their ad budget online. To me that's a plus, along with a solid website.

lotharbot• 14 years ago

Your description matches my perception of facebook ads, but not google ads. When I go to a search engine looking to spend money, I actually do expect ads and evaluate them first. Despite having the technical know-how to install an ad blocker, I haven't done so.

(Your statements imply majority or near-consensus opinions; I see no evidence to support these assertions.)

bad_user3• 14 years ago

I do not install ad-blockers. Tried out Ad-Block Plus, but disabled it after a week. Your claim about "most people" installing ad-blockers as soon as they can is completely unsubstantiated.

I don't do that because if a website or web service doesn't respect me as a customer, pushing annoying ads down my throat, I would rather stop reading/using it, which is a form of voting with your wallet. Instead I prefer to reward loyalty to websites that are tasteful and put users interests first. As an example, such a website would be Reddit.

Installing ad-blockers has the reverse effect of what most users want. Ads will become more and more intrusive and difficult to block. And by visiting such a website, you're still giving that website eyeballs, you're still passing links around to your friends, you're still rewarding them for their behavior. It's like hiding the cookie jar from a fat kid, then congratulating him for being fat.

Installing ad-blockers is also immoral, just as software piracy is. I've seen arguments of people that don't think so, but it's hard to justify the piracy of Photoshop when there are free or cheaper alternatives available, it's hard to justify the piracy of MS Office when LibreOffice is available and it's hard to justify using Google Search with ad-blockers when there are alternatives like DDG.

If you don't like the ads served, just don't freaking use the service/website in question. It's amazing how self-entitled some people are.

aaronwall5• 14 years ago

>>If you're shopping for something, the paid and Google shopping results are often more relevant than the organic results since a lot of them incorporate real time price feeds or promotion codes.<<

In many cases such feed prices are inaccurate. I have used Google shopping many times looking for the advertised price only to find it's "out of stock" or the promotion had ended by the time you click the link. People do the same crap to the other shopping search engines too.

>Advertisers do not bid on keywords that deliver no economic value so it's in their best interest to only show up when they are the most relevant to your query.<

In some case the economic value isn't in the best interest of users. A lot of spam targets installing malware, invading privacy, or similar. Further, there are ads which advise you to "buy x thousand links for cheap" or similar, which at their core suggest you violate Google's search guidelines. And Google had like 50,000 advertisers pushing counterfeit goods at one point (according to Google) and that issue got cleaned up only after Google was hit with a sting operation where they were caught selling ads for steroids for a person posing as a Mexican drug lord. Apparently the drug lord had a high quality score at the time. ;)

Steko• 14 years ago

Two minor nits about Google search:

(1) the bias toward current results seems overweighted. Maybe I'm the only one this annoys. I use the custom date settings more than any other feature on Google, maybe it could always be exposed.

(2) I wish there wasn't two buttons that say "News" that do different things while they have more sets of buttons in identically analogous places that say "Images" and "Maps" yet for some reason both buttons do exactly the same thing.

fpgeek2• 14 years ago

Yeah, I can never remember which "News" keeps my current search and which doesn't.

K2h• 14 years ago

to me this is like tv shows. it use to be about 50 min of show, 10 min of commercials

now its about 42 min show, 18 min commercials

mijail• 14 years ago

I think a big difference also is that Google's landing is clean, this is the results page. Yahoo's landing page is cluttered but their results page I would say is comparable.

Could somebody do this for other sites?

ck2• 14 years ago

There was also a big change in May 2010

http://i.imgur.com/43a23.png

2011 / May2010 / pre-May2010

(thumbnails are from searchpreview extension)

jordaninternets• 14 years ago

I can't believe Google removed the ability to scroll down.

brownbat• 14 years ago

The percentage of space occupied by ads varies depending on the search.

35% ads only 1% of the time isn't nearly so bad as 35% ads all the time. And the auctions help guarantee that ad-crowding happens most often when searchers are actually well served by advertisements.

People searching for "saas help desk" probably want to find people to sell them support, rather than just info about saas. Searching for just "saas" alone reduces ad volume. Searching for "origin of saas" reduces ad levels further. Wikipedia is the top entry, and we're down to one lonely ad at the bottom of the page.

Similar divergences occur with "linux" and "linux support."

I'm not convinced fewer ads would be better. Imagine asking a friend for help with your broken machine, and he hands you the short biography of Linus Torvalds.

When you want pure information (for me, most of the time) ads drift out of the picture. When you want to buy something, they're more prominent, just as you probably want them to be.

N.B. - There is a hell of a lot of whitespace on a 1920x1080 monitor though.

davvid• 14 years ago

Maybe it's just me, but all that wasted empty whitespace bothers me. I think it may have gotten worse when google did their big UI overhaul.

I think some screen real-estate could be saved by simply tightening the padding. I see a lot of areas that are blank. It would be really nice if the content was allowed to take some of this dead space.

ekianjo2• 14 years ago

If you scroll down the percentage of the search results significantly increases :) I found this article quite dumb, honestly. If you make stats, make it on the whole experience, not just the first seconds using Google...

srj• 14 years ago

I believe the number of ads displayed varies based on the perceived usefulness of the ads in answering the user's query. The ad space above the organic search results shouldn't be lost space.

Note: I work at Google but not on web search, ads, or UI design. This is just based on my personal observations.

Matt_Cutts2• 14 years ago

So the major issues I saw with this article were:

1) the left-hand column is counted as non-search, when the left-hand column is entirely about search. The left-hand column gives you ways to refine your search: you can limit the types of search results like news/images, slice/dice search results by date, limit search results to verbatim matches or to change the geographic weighting of search results, etc.

2) the actual search box is counted as non-search, as are the estimated results count and the time the search took.

3) the article treated whitespace as non-search, when shorter columns can actually make it easier and faster for users to scan the results.

That's still leaving aside facts like

- We actually think our ads can be as helpful as the search results in some cases. And no, that's not a new attitude. I found a quote from 2004 that said "In entering the advertising market, Google tested our belief that highly relevant advertising can be as useful as search results or other forms of content," and I'm sure I could find similar quotes with a bit more looking.

- And of course there are tons of searches where we don't show ads. A lot of people like to take a query that shows ads and say "Aha!" but they're forgetting all the queries that don't show ads.

Not to mention that our ads aren't just a straight auction; we try to take into account things like the quality of the destination page in deciding whether and where to show ads, just like we do with web search results.

BCM43• 14 years ago

Perhaps a better word for it would be results. I think it is valid to point out what percentage of the page is results, because really that's what you are looking at.

In reference to #2, I've never found the result count or time the search took to be of much use.

I'm also not convinced that ads are actually ever useful. I'd love to see an example of one that you think is useful for the search.

You do make a good point on white space. Does that only apply to whitespace near the results, or is that for the entire page?

Matt_Cutts2• 14 years ago

But the blog post headline is "Google Search is only 18% Search," and that's just not correct. I look at the result count to estimate whether I'm into the long tail of results, and I use the left-hand bar a bunch to refine searches based on time. That's all search and it goes toward making the search experience better for power users.

Ads can totally be useful; here's one from earlier today: [att cordless phones]. For Google's web results, we often interpret a query [X] as "information about X." The #1 web search result I see is http://telephones.att.com/att/index.cfm/cordless-telephones/ which does have information about cordless phones from AT&T. But I was looking for which models of cordless phones AT&T has. There's an ad that points to http://telephones.att.com/att/index.cfm/cordless-telephones/... which is actually more helpful because that shows me a bunch of different models.

Now you can argue that Google should be able to find and somehow return the page that AT&T bought the ad for. But that can be a hard problem (Bing returns the same page that Google does at #1 for example, as does DDG). So that ad was quite helpful for me, because it took me to a great page.

KirinDave• 14 years ago

> I'm also not convinced that ads are actually ever useful.

Look at the results of that query right there. I'd say the ads are at least as good as the results.

microarchitect• 14 years ago

I'm also not convinced that ads are actually ever useful. I'd love to see an example of one that you think is useful for the search.

I can't believe you're being honest here. Counting just the last couple days, terms I've seen useful ads are: "trek stores near <where I live>", "glue for wood", "coach usa" and "shuttle lga". Also for the vast majority of terms in my search history, which happen to be arcane technical questions, I don't see any ads at all.

waxjar• 14 years ago

The title is perhaps a bit misleading, but the article itself speaks of results instead of search/non-search. His claim is technically true.

To be fair, he should have also calculated the space the ads take up. However, one can tell by eye (from those screenshots at least) that that space has increased.

The conclusion he draws (neglecting ease of use) doesn't logically follow from the data, though.

nhebb• 14 years ago

I noticed the same flaw, but lets cut to the chase. I sell a flowcharting tool. According to Google Analytics, ~40% of my visitors are running displays with a screen height of 800 pixels or below.

Adjusting my browser window size accordingly, I search for "flowchart software". Only 2 organic results are above the fold, whereas there are 7 ads above the fold. 2/9 = 22%, so the OP really wasn't that far off the mark for many users.

ftwinnovations• 14 years ago

And yet if I were in the market for a [paid] flow charting package I would immediately look at the ads first, as in my opinion those ones would be the highest quality packages. I might also trust the first few organic links, but why bother when there are so many professional competitors vying for my business with the ads?

The ads are just another form of search.

cnu• 14 years ago

Do Google employees also see the same interface with ads? And if so, shouldn't it be illegal as the employees (in)directly increase Google's revenue?

ojbyrne• 14 years ago

I'd hazard a guess that they whitelist any clicks from within Google networks so that nobody gets charged for them. That's fairly standard practice.

onetimeuse0014• 14 years ago

Number aside...18% or 21.47% the trend is obvious to everyone.

(I know you don't believe what you wrote but you had to say it anyway. Google's attitude changed in 2004 when you added ads on top, so attitude shifts to justify whatever you do. See Google's attitude on the original Pagerank paper)

Ads are as helpful as content? First there's a major conflict of interest since you control both ads and content. One update and content shifts, making ads by default better or worst. A tiny shifts not noticed by 99% of people can increase your profits by a wide margin. A tiny shift here and a Panda shift there and your revenue reaches $50 Billion a year, or a huge cut of the total e-comm trade.

If I search for Adidas 2012 VX Shoe (made it up) and I see 3-4 ads on top, why are they more helpful? Because they have it, because they have most reviews, cheapest price or what? In every case I have tried advertising it's the ad price difference, especially among top merchants. Of course that ad price is added to the consumer one way or another so nice try, portraying this as a helpful thing. Equally as important, the sites that lost traffic due to more ads are forced to go out of business or advertise /increase bids. A vicious cycle, induced by Google, to benefit Google.

>> And of course there are tons of searches where we don't show ads.

There is no money in many searches, that's known, nothing altruistic about it. You show ads where you have ads and where it is profitable, in key markets.

>> Not to mention that our ads aren't just a straight auction; we try to take into account things like the quality of the destination page in deciding whether and where to show ads, just like we do with web search results.

The difference between Geico, Progressive, All State et al is just the ad price and CTR, in sum how much money you make from them. The best site for the user would be a comparison site or maybe a CNN Fortune article that compared them.

The real questions: Should Google be trusted to rank organic search in an unbiased manner when they have a huge incentive to manipulate them, quarter by quarter? The only sure thing, unless Google is lying to SEC, is that Google's profits are increasing by an extraordinary amount after all these changes were made.

Is it good for the economy and for the web to have one company that controls both ranking and ads? Google control as much as 95% in some EU countries and roughly 70% in USA. You are talking about monopoly territory.

aaronwall5• 14 years ago

>>The difference between Geico, Progressive, All State et al is just the ad price and CTR, in sum how much money you make from them. The best site for the user would be a comparison site or maybe a CNN Fortune article that compared them.<<

Absolutely. And it is worth noting that recent Progressive case, where they defended a person who killed a Progressive auto insurance client (to try to skip out on paying the settlement to their customer's family).

Having a diversity of the same types of companies (basically what often amounts to white label brands with the same exact business model) isn't the same thing as offering various entry points into various stages of the funnel & different editorial opinions.

Also the brand bias in the organic results often makes them parallel the ads once more. And that awareness is often driven by advertising. The day after the Progressive fiasco I remember going to YouTube and seeing a huge Progressive ad. ;)

dorait• 14 years ago

Do you have any stats on what percentage of people click on all those options on the left? One option may be to divide the page into two columns one for paid search results and the other for organic search results.

aaronwall5• 14 years ago

In some cases Google has reduced the organic search results to 7 listings per page. On some of the search results where Google has done that they have also added 3 AdWords ads at the top & the bottom of the organic search results.

The reason the prefer ads in the left column to the right is that is where most the attention goes & most of the clicks go. Ads at the top of the left column of the search results might get a 20% to 30% clickthrough rate (higher than that even on navigational search results...more like 90%+). And ads in the right column are lucky to get even a 1% CTR.

bobbybob2• 14 years ago

this 1-3 columns not containing organic search results (main product of google, it why peoples using google).

A. Ads can be helpful, even on MFA site (and clicked very good if organic results not providing any answers). This technique was tested by lot of webmasters before. Also it just matter of thinking (ads is really helpful) and earnings reports.

Peoples visit google to search the web, but not to search adwords websites. But google give maximum priority for ads, not for their main product - organic search results. It will lead to decreased importance of google as search engine very soon. That articles you mention here - search google or bing and you will find lot of different opinions.

B: that searches where no adwords is not commercial. 99% of peoples creating websites & content because it their workjob, what mean webmasters also need to make money. If it not happens - it will mean less importance of google for webmasters and for searchers in nearest future. Just check how google alexa traffic rank fluctuating after black & white animals (time when google places ads above fold in search results).

C: So maximum daily budget/ppc is not important anymore? 8-P

cheae• 14 years ago

This is a comparison made back in 2005 and Google has a better UI than the rest

http://startupboy.com/2005/12/20/fix-the-search-interface-fi...

rfergie• 14 years ago

> We actually think our ads can be as helpful as the search results in some cases.

As someone who works managing PPC adverts I have been referred to as "Google meat based matching algorithm"

jay_s• 14 years ago

Matt - I will stay clear of the percentage of real estate from the screen and other issues, however I think many people and businesses that advertise with Google (mine is one) feel the page does not do enough to differentiate the paid ads with the organic results. This is especially true with the ads at the top. I would ask that Google seriously look at changing this practice and if memory serves me right it use to be this way. Some people in this thread have said the same thing and I am fairly positive that most users and advertisers would agree. Thank you for your consideration.

godsboy7777• 14 years ago

Hi Matt,

But what about Google testing 7 and 4 results per SERP page?

I mean no offence but if you guys are showing less organic results there is nothing Google could say to convince me that they not promoting ads more than organic results?

I agree ADS are just as relevant if not more than organic results and in most cases better than organic results as people spending money on the ads, normally spend a lot of money and time in their products and or services as well as landing page to ensure the UX is great and that it will lead to a sale.

But not everyone has money?

Karn• 14 years ago

This shouldn't be an issue to programmers. With Greasemonkey or Scriptish it's trivial to write a script to clean up the page so that you only see the results.

damian2000• 14 years ago

I was reminded today of the kind of tricky things google gets up to when I went to the download page for "Win32 Disk Imager" on Softpedia (as linked to by the Raspberry Pi's Download page).

http://www.softpedia.com/get/CD-DVD-Tools/Data-CD-DVD-Burnin...

Check it out for yourself. You see that big, prominant "Download Now" button - that's an ad served by googleadservices.com.

I don't know how they get away with crap like this, it surely must be against their own ad policy.

nostrademons3• 14 years ago

It is against policy:

http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...

I'll ping folks internally. If you look at the button with Developer Tools, it's one single giant image that's an ad for Download Manager. The advertiser stuck a Download button on it and is presumably running ads on sites where you download things.

option_greek• 14 years ago

I had to disable ad block to see the same screen and wow what a difference. No wonder Google still looks clean to me - I'm not even seeing their ads.

sravfeyn• 14 years ago

I always forget that Google does ads on search page, after I installed the amazing AdBlock extension on Chrome.

I don't see Google, Facebook Ads and many more, AdBlock knows what.

bobbybob2• 14 years ago

google have ads above fold, but matt cutts not tell us anything about it. And how it improving user experience. Google now cares only about adwords money, not about quality of their main product - organic search results. All that stories about best possibly user experience it just tries to hide that fact.

drcube• 14 years ago

Use Adblock Plus. Problem solved. Google SERP is 100% relevant for me. It's just results, white space and a little bit of UI.

If you think advertising is going away or getting scaled back any time soon, you're fooling yourself. Just block them and stop thinking about it. Now if only they could invent Adblock for Reality....

ashutoshrai• 14 years ago

Considering the present standards of organic ranking an aware user(searcher) will look for natural results more, than paid ones. So it is better to let organic results take more space on Google search pages than inorganic ads.

Google Search is only 18% Search

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