How 'G' could make a fortune & keep advertisers & publishers happy

While average users probably won't notice

[Clark]

If they skew the results of SERPS to benefit adsense publishers. Display pages that are less relevant to the search than the adwords ads are. Presto, adsense publishers get much higher CTR, Adwords advertisers get much more qualified traffic, G's revenue goes up, more publishers will want to be tied to adsense, getting G more advertisers and eyeballs due to their little "Ads by Google" ad on the bottom. A self-feeding little money machine. OK OK, I guess they can keep the SERPS relevant ;)

[John_Shaw]

Skewing SERPS to benefit Adsense publishers or Adwords users could make Google, advertisers, and publishers happy. However, I don't think it would make search engine users happy. The most important thing Google can do is to remain the most popular search engine. If word got out, and word would get out, that the results were skewed to favor advertisers, Google could lose their place as one of the most popular search engines. That would hurt everyone.

While the FTC has not taken any formal action regarding search engines, it has let search engine companies know that it is watching. Any skewing of results without a disclaimer might result in FTC enforcement action, IMHO.

[justageek]

I agree with John_Shaw. They cannot afford any bad press from the government. They have already got in a bit of trouble with the page rank scheme that basically never gives the little guy a chance just because they are not popular.

[europeforvisitors]

They cannot afford any bad press from the government. They have already got in a bit of trouble with the page rank scheme that basically never gives the little guy a chance just because they are not popular.

What trouble? And where do you get the mistaken idea that "little guys" don't do well in Google? If anything, the opposite is true. Google has probably done more than anyone else to level the playing field so that mom-and-pop Web sites can compete with and, in many cases, do better than big corporate-owned sites.

[chiyo]

Not a snowball's chance in hell.

Google will not throw away their hard earned credibility for the sake of short term gain. Thankfully for them, google has always been able to focus on the big picture and the long term one, unlike many in the Web business.

Endanger the credibility of Google's main index by any commercial influence from PFI to Pay for Review to Adsense site-favouritism, and Google will lose their key advantage which keeps people coming back.

[John_Shaw]

Google has probably done more than anyone else to level the playing field

Very true. I am one of the little guys and I consistently am near the top in the search on certain keyword, well above large commercial sites.

I agree that Google's credibility is their most important asset, and they won't risk it.

[Clark]

I'm kind of playing devil's advocate, I don't think they'd really do that to the extent I mentioned. But I do think they are good businessmen and good businessmen watch the bottom line even they do good PR to make it seem like they care more about other things then money.

Their moves are not only about a better experience for the end user. The purchase of Pyra and the way they are handling their toolbar, building up their news site, doing adwords and adsense, I think they have a very clever strategy and we may be surprised at how it all plays out in the end.

If they skew results subtly it will work. In fact, someone else here says that urls are getting into Google through the mediabot. If its true that already skews results in favor of adsense publishers who will get more pages indexed. (BTW, I don't agree that Mediabot crawls get into the index. I did run a test making sure to have the toolbar turned off and as far as I can tell, Mediabot is for adsense only.)