Google testing in-site search box on brand searches: leaves a funny smell
If you haven’t seen it then it looks like this
At first glance seems like another useful addition by Google. Except on closer inspection this is not a search box for products or holidays in this case provided by Virgin, but a search box for other pages on the site. Same as the one in the Google toolbar – quite handy if the search functionality of the website is a bit crap. But for specialist vertical searches like travel where Google has managed to fail so far, I’m not sure.
When it’s bought out into the results like this, I start to question the motive. On the one hand it’s great that a user can search deeper into the site, but the problem I have is the way these new results are displayed, back into a normal results page, but this time you have to compete against all the paid search ads.
To demonstrate –
If you wanted to find a holiday in Antigua from Virgin, you’d ordinarily search for Virgin Holidays, and then go to the site and search for Antigua using their holiday search functionality. The chances are you’d find one.
But now, instead of going to the site, you could be persuaded to search for Antigua using the additional search box provided by Google. And this is what you’d get
So now virgin has to compete with all the paid search ads from competitors and if they’re lucky the user may click on their own PPC ad. You may be able protect your trademark for a brand search, but not for the generic term.
Let’s hope this never comes out properly without the option to turn it off from your Google webmaster tools console.
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Hey Nilhan,
Is there no way a brand, such as Virgin Holidays, can protect their brand in a site search for Google Adwords?
For Example - A Google site search for ‘Virgin Holidays’ (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=virgin+holidays) shows Virgin as the only PPC bidders as they are protecting for a brand search. Can they not do this for a site search? surely - this is the same as a brand search as you are searching for a term only within that brand’s website?