SERP 2005 - the shape of things to come?

Left: Non-profit, Right: Commercial, Spammers: in the bin

[kapow]

Its pure speculation but each month I feel more and more that Google will achieve a division between non-profit sites, commercial and spammers ie:
Non profit sites on the left, Commercial sites on the right (adwords), spammers and affiliates in the bin.

I suspect Google will achieve this first and rake in $billions, then the other major SEs snake-charmed by such a market will follow suit.

[rfgdxm1]

Not so easy in the sense that a site can have both info and sales content.

[kaled]

I have both freeware and shareware on my site. So where does it go in this brave new world of search technology?

Kaled.

[kapow]

The reason they may divide profit from non-profit sites is that sites that sell something have money to spend. So why allow free listing for commercial sites if the SEs can get money for the listing?

One commercial page in a site of a thousand non-profit pages would still be free advertising.

Its not what you or I think is fair, its what they can make money from. If the SEs become able to detect a commercial site (not page) they will put it in the commercial category.

[TinkyWinky]

remember that a lot of so called spammers do provide a good service to the user...

admittedly a lot don't though! Not fussed about these guys going ;)

[curvity]

If Google were to separate profit and non-profit sites their relevance would drop drastically, causing searchers to look for more relevant search methods. Google can't risk losing their audience because the audience is the true source of their revenue (not the advertisers). Their audience is the reason that the advertisers pay! Google treads a fine line--they must keep their relevance good enough to keep their search audience, but they must generate revenue and be profitable at the same time.

[Chndru]

kapow, very nice post. I would be suprised, if we dont see things starting to shape up like this soon, though the partition of the web wont be that apparent, at the first glance.

[kapow]

...partition of the web wont be that apparent

Although I hate the idea as it makes my job harder, I think the online public would find it easier to find what they want e.g. to buy something or to learn something.

[crobb305]

Some of us who are "affiliates" have a growing amount of well-written and useful content. Where do you draw the line?

[yvt360]

If all commercial sites were ppc I think you would find a big swing toward print advertising, especially because everyone would be driving the price up, it wouldn't take long before it was less expesive to print 100,000 print pieces and mail them to a selected market rather ppc.

OT -We get most of our traffic to our site through print advertising and the visitors seem to be more likely to make a decision to purchase.

[seofreak]

The reason they may divide profit from non-profit sites is that sites that sell something have money to spend. So why allow free listing for commercial sites if the SEs can get money for the listing?

then it wouldn't be a search engine. the likes of altavista, yahoo, aol, msn, etc. will become more popular then. I don't think google will do that ..

[gpmgroup]

The divide betweeen commercial and infomation can never be clear cut. A lot of infomation is only available on commercial sites and the SERPs would be very anemic without those pages.

[Spica]

Let me say how I feel about this idea from a user point of view: I have NEVER clicked on an advertisement when looking for a place to shop on the internet, for the same reason as I immediately throw away any advertisement that I find in my mail box. My instinct is that, if the store is good and sells quality items, they don't need to advertise heavily. They will be found by word of mouth and repeat customers.

Granting, my behavior may not be that of the average web surfer, but I am certainly not the only one reacting this way. Back then, I started using Google because 1) their results were good, and 2) they did not show ads. I continued using this search engine DESPITE the ads and mostly because of the lack of valuable alternative. However, if the ads move to the top or become too prominent, I will not come back.

In the future, if I can't find what I need in the regular SERPs, I will use other search engines, or directories, and I will bookmark the stores I liked, but it is very, very unlikely that I will start clicking on ads. Do you, as a user, trust what ads say? I don't.

[merlin30]

If Google wanted to seperate the commercial from the informational why did they create Adsense?

[adfree]

As a very rough direction I can see some movement towards this, BUT:

In the end all major SE's (or another smart, slick startup at first?) will find ways to find out, mimick and return what users really think, need, experience and find most useful - put that into context of what's available and serve up exactly that mix -> user-bound to the max.

Neither Google, nor any other smart@ss around here is going to win for the long haul by dictating, directing anything for their own sake!

And this is, ladies and gemtlemen, where the puck is gonna be.

AGAIN and again, therefore: build sites that mean something or everything to someone, in the end this someone is going to pay your bills. Nothing to offer: better live cheap!

Cheers, Jens