For about two years, Google have been providing a site search box for specific navigational searches (e.g. brand searches). This is an extension of their organic site links, and lets users refine their original search query within the scope of the site. While possibly beneficial for users, it creates additional leakage points for site owners.
Consider the following user journey scenario:
1) A consumer wants to go to the Pricerunner UK comparison site to check prices for a particular television
2) Their typical behaviour leads them to start by typing in the navigational query “pricerunner” into google
3) Google shows the price runner organic listings as top results, complete with a site search box
4) The user enters the actual model number “Samsung UE-40B6000″ for a price check
Brilliant! Or is it? It depends on what happens next (below screenshot):
5) Upon the user hitting the sub search button, Google searches the pricerunner.co.uk website and presents the results in the organic SERP’s. In addition, it also shows any PPC adverts that are bidding against the keyword, effectively pushing down the Pricerunner search results way down the page
6) The users scan the prices in the adverts (and no advert from pricerunner) and choses to click the advert with the cheapest price
The result: A satisfied consumer, more advertising revenue to Google, but no organic traffic or sales for the price comparison site.
In the above case, I doubt this is the best user experience, consider that the user have chosen to specifically search a particular website for more information. In my view it just adds to the clutter by showing adverts from competing comparison services or retailers.
What can search marketers do?
Except for buying the PPC adverts against high-value keywords, there seem to have been limited success with larger companies to ask to opt out of this functionality. For example neither Amazon nor Ebay are anymore having this functionality.
What’s your experience of Google search within search SERP function? Have you noticed any drops or gains in traffic?
Related posts:
- Google AdWords PPC Personalisation through Session-Based Broadmatch
- Google Product Ads Lowers the Barriers of Entry to Paid Search
- Google Prepares Webmasters for Page Loading Speed as a Search Engine Ranking Factor
- The Clutterfication of the Google Search Engine Results Page
- Is Google Social Search the Next Big Social Networking Site?
