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Behold the soul of a search engine. It appears to be available to the highest bidder.
And Google couldn't have paid for a better endorsement.
"Overture is a giant database of ads, not a search engine," said Tim Armstrong, Google's ad sales director.
"The bottom line is users don't come to us for advertising, they come to us for information," Armstrong said. "There is a clear distinction between the two."
[washingtonpost.com...]
Back before Inktomi introduced PFI, the complaints about Goto relevance were traced back in 8 cases out of 10 to inktomi results. In other words, it was Inktomi that was found to offer the irrelevant results. In the specific tests, Goto's results were mostly found to be extremely relevant by users *except* where there were few or no sponsors.
The writer speaks of advertising, which is all well and good, but obviously fails to think at all of ROI. Its as if she thinks companies ignore the return on their advertising dollars. That is true of a very few (the ones who bite the dust soon after big launches) but most untrue of the majority.
I'm just fed up of Overture, Espotting, Kanoodle etc always being the bad guys. Yahoo *may* add you to their directory if you pay, and *may* drop you if you cease to pay again the next year. In other words, business express may see you included even where an editor otherwise feels your site does not deserve a listing on relevance to the category alone.
What is the difference then between Yahoo and Overture? Overture shows clearly which listings have paid for inclusion. Yahoo does not show which companies used business express.
The article I thought was fairly uninformative (possibly a little sensationalist in its style), which unfortunately is still the case with many traditional media people trying to understand the web.
If there indeed was an algorithm that took in all the complexities of language, and ambiguity, and the very subjective nature of each searcher, and someone <perhaps even the mighty Google?> found a way to be totally objective <AND not subject to manipulation> would that then become the standard to which ALL search engines must adhere, by regulation? The whole concept stymies me.
The market decides who delivers the relevant results, en masse and individually, not whether it is paid, manipulated, "pure" or total hogwash. This is why Google rocks!-- Because currently the market says so.
It is however quite amusing to watch the traditional media crowd attempt to report "findings of fact" based on misunderstanding of the medium.
The "soul" of a search engine - I do like Leslie's style.
Overture is indeed a giant database of ads. Just like a banner network across many portals. When and if the advertisers value of being in that database is diminishes to a negative, they will cease.
Relevance in the mind of each individual, and the aggregate surfer will determine if and when this happens. My thought is that since the top several listings are found on most of the major engines searchers who use multiple engines in their searches will start to ignore those top listings just as they did banners. Quickly. Its E-volution at work.
There actually seemed to be a good number of people there who were surprised by this revelation. There is also a group who is in support of the practice, and there is a very highly rated post from an a person who works at a porn site hosting company with some questionable practices.
This interesting reading and I hope it's not frowned upon that I posted this here.
My informal polling of surfers (not web professionals) shows that they click on the "green box" or the "ads" when they want to BUY SOMETHING. By not calling them ads, you get the surfers who are NOT in buy mode clicking on your advertisement, thereby driving up your cost and driving down your ROI.
The game is about money, not relevance or honesty. I would prefer that the ADVERTISEMENTS that I buy are clearly labeled as such.
Where did you get those figures at?
