6 replies to this topic

[iamlost]

Well.
The sky has officially fallen.

Note: my bold emphasis:

...this article currently ranks on the first page of Google unpaid results and in the News onebox for the query...

The Power Of Headlines: The LA Times Gets It Right With Their Piece On The Inauguration, by Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land, 21-January-2013.

The dirty little secret is out of the closet and finally appropriately identified. Google search is (1) paid and (2) unpaid results. No more ads, Google properties, organic results...nice and simple: paid and unpaid.

Thanks, Vanessa.

From GoTo to Google... from selling selling position to ... selling placement. The more things change the more they stay the same.

[cre8pc]

Journalists call them headlines; SEOs call them titles and headings. Whatever you call them, they’re the words that tell someone that your article is what they want to read. Look at Google News any day of the week for examples of headlines that give you absolutely no idea what the article might be about. Search engines don’t know what to rank them for; users don’t know whether to click.

Yeah baby! It's a usability persuasive design for increased conversions thing! But of course, nobody in SEO wants to listen to that crazy usability stuff

[glyn]

Well it looks like that algo still need spoonfeeding after all these years

[EGOL]

From GoTo to Google... from selling selling position to ... selling placement. The more things change the more they stay the same.

I don't "get it".

[iamlost]

I don't "get it".

You young 'uns need to read up on your web history

GoTo was a search engine back in the day.
GoTo Sells Positions by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Watch, 03-March-1998. Yes, 1998.

Search engine GoTo debuted its new pay-for-placement service on Feb. 21. It allows web site owners to bid for placement. Those willing to pay more can appear higher in the search results.

Pay-for-placement is not new. Open Text experimented with it in mid-1996, and numerous small search directories currently offer the ability to pay for a better ranking.

Despite this, the major search engines have avoided such a service. This is mainly because they see their results as akin to editorial copy. They aren't something that advertisers are supposed to influence. By allowing pay-for-placement, search engine users may begin to mistrust the results they receive. Such complaints helped cause Open Text to give up its experiment.

What was interesting was that to the right of these paid results was the amount that each click would cost the site, i.e. $.05, $0.49 - a transparency rather foreign today.

Google is a search engine here today.
Getting your ads above Google search results, Google AdWords Help, 16-October-2012.

When customers search on Google, ads can appear at the top of the page, on the side of the page, or on the bottom of the page. Only the highest ranking ads are eligible to show at the top of the page. Your ad's position on the page is determined by your Quality Score and your bid.

...and your bid

Yes, the ads above search query results have a different background BUT it is subtle and may not be apparent on many monitors. Many people have written about this, i.e. Is Google Intentionally Trying to Minimize the Fact that These are Ads? by Mike Blumenthal, 31-January-2012.

Depending on the query Google properties may be mixed with the results although increasingly these are being moved within the right sidebar Knowledge Graph results which mostly link to Google pages.

Thus:

From GoTo selling the top positions to Google not quite blending 'ads' that look like results on top is a difference of minor degree: the more things change the more they stay the same.

[EGOL]

From GoTo selling the top positions to Google not quite blending 'ads' that look like results on top is a difference of minor degree:

No wonder I didn't "get it". This is picking really tiny nits.


I do remember goto and the pastel overture ads.

I ran one of those ads and had my first sale within minutes.

I thought that I would get rich fast... but the wait for the next sale was a couple of days.

[glyn]

VFM always came from Looksmart and being able to spoon your site into MSN (when it was being used) for $149.

But probably the thing that was especially nice was having the Looksmart UK team on the floor above us in a shared office