There is no point in getting too angry too often. And when it comes to PPC I rarely get angry or feel any other emotion. Everything in PPC can generally be scoped, planned, projected, dissected to within an inch of its ROI driven life. To me personally that makes it a bit dull – its a bit like Internet Marketing on auto pilot. But is does generate sales for many sites, and cost effective high ROI sales. Even affiliates can make good profits with PPC. So I guess it was only a matter of time before the money hungry share holders at Google wanted to get as much money from it as they can.
For the first time I saw Google trying to steal everyones sales with their price comparrison function. Right at the top of the results, displayed to distract users from the other results they’ve rattled in a price comparison function. I was doing some research for a potential client in the financial sector – rather than looking to strangle myself with expensive debt. I think the ditraction factor is hugely important – by creating a level of abrasion on a page you can increase clickthrough rates on your on screen items. Highlight it, change the font, do anything just to make to clash with other elements – not so much as it annoys people but just enough that they have a thought of “whats that” as they read through your content. The new item certainly did that to me today – so much so that I got a PPC expert to explain it to me. Apparently its part of Googles Merchant Search functionality.
Google Price Comparisson function
You select an amount from the drop down and click compare lenders and you’re sent to: http://www.google.co.uk/MerchantSearchBeta/search. And you get:
Is google an affiliate?
The swine @ Google must be getting commision on sales – or the cost per click must be massive.
If you’re an affiliate relying on PPC be on the look out. Google may be coming to steal all your luctrative sales. May be time to get into some SEO and stop developing bridge pages to make your sales. If Google expands this to many more queries it could be a fun ride.
2 Comments
They’ve been doing this for ages using google base to display product prices at the top of search results. The funny thing is, they aren’t affiliate links with THAT system – so it looks as though they are trying to genuinely assist searchers here!
That said, it must be a worry for all Price Comparison site – if people can get accurate price comparisons direct from Google, isn’t that shattering the Price Comparison model absolutely?
Imagine how Confused.com et al would hurt if Google started taking XML feeds of car insurance quotes!
As always, the focus has to shift to quality – and this looks to be a quality service from Google. The only way around it is to plan a new model, or start selling products/ providing insurance yourself.
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