Why Companies Are Upset About Google’s Search-Within-Search

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 24 of March , 2008 at 8:14 am

In the meantime, for those complaining consider this. If I search for YOUR COMPANY and then decide to shop elsewhere–after using a site search for YOUR SITE and seeing an AdWords ad–how strong was my relationship with you in the first place???

Andy Beal once again makes a good point.

He’s addressing an article that appeared in The New York Times concerning Google’s new search-within-search feature. The feature allows searchers to search within a company’s website without leaving Google. The way it works is like this: The user makes a query. When a list of results appears on the SERP for that query, some results will show a search box beneath them. The user can then make another query within that search box to search within the company for which that search box appears. The problem, some of these companies are saying, is that competitors’ ads are appearing on that second SERP.

For instance, let’s say I search for Best Buy. The top listing, of course, is for the big retailer’s web site. But there is a second search box below that company’s listing in the SERP. That search box allows me to search Best Buy’s web site. Cool, huh? Well, some people don’t think so.

Let’s type in mp3 and see what happens. Wow! 527,000 results - all on Best Buy’s web site. Plus, two PPC ads for Best Buy competitors. When you consider that over 80% of searchers don’t even click on PPC ads, that’s not a real big deal. Is it? According to some retailers, they don’t want to take a chance on losing those potential customers. Amazon.com is one of them, and they’ve asked Google to turn the feature off. Didn’t know you can do that? Well, now you do.

There are two ways of looking at this. The first way is as Amazon does - that it’s a negative. You could lose customers (who aren’t really loyal customers because if they were then they wouldn’t click a competitor’s ad nor would they be searching for you in the first place because they’d either have you bookmarked or just type your URL into their browser window); or, you can see it as a way to help your potential customers find what they are looking for even if it’s on a competitor’s web site.

That’s right. Traditional customer service. In retail, everyone knows that sometimes a customer will ask for an item that is out of stock or that you don’t carry. You know your loyal customers will come back to you even if such disappointments occur from time to time. So why not seize upon the opportunity to provide them above-and-beyond customer service. Call a competitor, ask if they have the item your customer wants, and if so tell your customer where they can go to get what they want. It works. That kind of service builds customer loyalty because your customer will know that if you happen to be out of stock or don’t carry what they’re looking for that you will at least make the effort to help them find it. When they want something else, they’ll come back to you knowing they’ll get the same level of service. That’s the way that I see the Google search-within-search feature. It’s just good customer service, and I’m guessing that Google sees it that way too.

Category: Search Engines, Search Marketing

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