Google Search within Search – User Assistance or Retailer Handicap?

Google recently began experimenting with a new site search box within results:

Through experimentation, we found that presenting users with a search box as part of the result increases their likelihood of finding the exact page they are looking for. So over the past few days we have been testing, and today we have fully rolled out, a search box that appears within some of the search results themselves. This feature will now occur when we detect a high probability that a user wants more refined search results within a specific site. Like the rest of our snippets, the sites that display the site search box are chosen algorithmically based on metrics that measure how useful the search box is to users.

We hope that you will make use of the site search box in order to get the information you’re looking for as quickly and easily as possible.

Here is what this looks like in the SERPs:

This is what appears on the right sidebar for a simple site search:

As you can see by this query for “computer hard drive,” competitors have access to results for a query for specific search terms.

What does this mean for Best Buy and other retailers?

Well in the case of Best Buy, here are the top three results from the site search for the query “computer hard drive”:

Not their best showing, is it?

Here is what the NY Times had to say today:

The problem, for some in the industry, is that when someone enters a term into that secondary search box, Google will display ads for competing sites, thereby profiting from ads it sells against the brand. The feature also keeps users searching on Google pages and not pages of the destination Web site.

Take, for instance, a situation last week, when users of Google searched The Washington Post and were given a secondary search box. Those who typed “jobs” into that second box saw related results for The Post’s employment pages, but the results were bordered by ads for competing employment sites like CareerBuilder or Monster.com.

So even though users began the process by stating their intention to reach The Post, Google’s ads steered at least some of them to competitors. Similar situations arose when users relied on Google to search nytimes.com.

While executives of both The Times and Washington Post. Newsweek Interactive declined to comment, plenty of others assailed Google over what they saw as a heavy-handed approach.

So, regardless if your opinion is that “Google is being evil” or “just taking advantage of their own abilities” it certainly begs the question: “Do you think that titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords are no longer useful?”

1. Is this showing us that Google can/is be/being evil?

or,

2. Is this an answer to concerns with advertising on trademarked terms?

or,

3. Is this just Google trying to squeeze more ad revenue by giving competitors what they want?

What are your thoughts?

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Tagged as: google, google adwords, serps, site search