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Comment by jlarocco

9 years ago

Not sure if you're being facetious or not, but they're paying Google to not show ads for their competitors when a person searches for "uber".

13 comments

jlarocco

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Pyxl101  9 years ago

As far as I'm aware, that's not something that Google allows you to do. Is it?

It seems more likely that:

- Other services have decided not to bid on "Uber". It may be more useful to bid on general keywords like "taxi" or "black car", etc.

- The price for that keyword is too high to be worth it

- The performance of the ads is poor such that Google doesn't show them.

- It's also possible that Lyft is bidding on the keyword "Uber", but only in certain geographical areas where they're trying to grow their presence.

  • idunno246  9 years ago

    It's indirect. Lyft sets a max price of $0.05 for an ad placement, so uber has to set $0.06 to ensure that they get the ad and lyft doesnt.

    • omarchowdhury  9 years ago

      What's with everyone chipping in knowledge of things they have no clue about? In your scenario, Google would just put the Lyft ad below the Uber ad in the search results, not make it invisible.

      6 replies →

  • soared  9 years ago

    No it is not something Google allows. But for big brands they manually disallow paid results (see "Nike"). I don't see any ads on the uber results page.