Swanson - 2:31 am on Oct 20, 2011 (gmt 0)

I also want to add that one question from the panel to Pierre Far and Kaspar Szymanski about them noticing Adwords appearing at the bottom of the serps in a test was met with blank expressions and protestations about the fact they have no communication with the ad department and it's not their remit.

Now, I get the idea that they want to distance themselves as organic specialists away from the ad business.

However, as a business that operates in the real world does that not strike you as crazy?

I mean, if we were talking (as Google often does) about your website and the content of it and being in control of it - in what world is it okay to have part of your website controlled by different parties that have different motives?

Sites get banned from Google because of this.

You just can not have major real estate on the biggest search engine in the world controlled by two different un-communicating departments.

Does that not sound silly or am I totally missing something here?

They came across like little boys with toys and that was the common consensus from the guys I spoke to.

I appreciate the need to be impartial - but Google themselves talk about webmasters controlling their sites and the guidelines and the issues as a connected "site" thing.

If they don't connect (i.e. they don't communicate between departments that place content on their own massive site) then what the hell is that all about? Why do they expect us to?

There are 10 listings (content) on the search results page (sometimes all sorts because of universal search but you get the idea) and 8 sponsored listings.

That is a pretty even spread of content. And there is no communication between those two. So how do they do quality, conversion, user experience - simply how can they really test how good Google is for the user?

How can they really work with engagement metrics on Adwords if certain keywords could generate new universal search options on the main organic results - what happens if one day there is tonnes of local results with maps, and one day there isn't. What happens when different advertisers surface in Adwords that create higher clicks - what happens when advertisers use different creatives causing different click rates versus organic.

Without sharing between the two departments - how do you analyse cause and effect?

And if you don't communicate - isn't there a possiblility you get the wrong signals? Isn't it possible that Adwords advertisers affect the click rates of the organic - but that the dynamic quality of those advertisers then in effect change the click rates on the organic searches (i.e. the dynamic mix of brands etc. advertising on Adwords).

Surely Adwords and organic affect each other? So if you don't communicate between departments - how can you really create a Panda algorithm or any other one?

The answer is - either they are lying and they do communicate and correlate data.

Or they aren't and they don't. Now that is really very very scary and the algo is based on bad data.

Now my point is that no billion dollar business doesn't have half of their site not communicate with the other half.

So they can't be telling the truth. Someone must be looking at the bigger picture - someone is looking at interactions that include organic and adwords.

[edited by: Swanson at 2:53 am (utc) on Oct 20, 2011]