What would happen if the Australian watchdog wins its case against Google?
Posted by Louis Venter on 19 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Search Engine News
News.com.au reports that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is suing Google over is misleading layout of the sponsored results section. In their eyes they fail to “adequately distinguish sponsored links from ‘organic` search results”
Naturally Google said they would fight the case. Rob Shilkin, Google Australia’s spokesperson labelled the suit as “an attack on all search engines and the Australian businesses, large and small, who use them to connect with customers throughout the world.” I think that was perhaps a little strong, theyre just asking for more distiction arent they?
While each party has a point its difficult to pick a clear winner on this one given the scale of the legal battle that is surely to follow but what would happen if Google lost?
IMHO I think it could throw us back into the past where 85% of visitors clicked on the first natural listing before looking at the sponsored link section.
Would this hurt Google? I’m not so sure.
In April Google changed the background to yellow to help pay per click listings stand out from the natural results. This was probably in response to Adsense “banner blindness” and I’m sure they noted that click rates increased. But how long would this trend continue? Surely banner blindness will eventually take over no matter what the colour the top paid search section is? We are continually bombarded with advertising in every shape and form to the extent that it all becomes a blur unless the advert is really exceptional. Why would paid search be any different?
The reason I dont think that Google will be affected is that many paid search specialists swear by position 3 as they see the first paid search on the right column as being the prime real estate for paid search. The thought process behind the behavior is correct too. People ignore the top paid section as it is significantly different to the rest of the page and hence it falls into the “banner blindness” category. The paid search section to the right however is different as people have a real intention to look at which companies have paid to advertise there. They aren’t a part of the main body of search results and are clearly defined on the page but more importantly clearly “paid for” in the searchers mind. If you are looking for paid listings you look to the right, you just do.
Is the seperation issue a storm in a teacup? I think so but either way search still delivers more relevant visitors at a fraction of the cost. Organic search provides even more ROI and transfers some of the trust that the searcher has in Google to the client’s website.
Personally I would like to see the paid and organic search results completely distinct for the sake of our paid and organic focused clients. It would match the searchers intention. Look right for paid, look at the main body for Organic. No Adwords blindness.
