Comment by Barbing
7 hours ago
Otherwise their competitor gets top billing for their very own brand name. See this on Apple’s App Store too. Feels very unfair.
7 hours ago
Otherwise their competitor gets top billing for their very own brand name. See this on Apple’s App Store too. Feels very unfair.
They’re selling a limited ad-space - again, instead of to their competitor.
In that context: suggest a fairer way.
Now, it may just be you don’t like advertising in this context - a valid take. But a different one!
The fairer thing is what Google _used_ to do: organic results in the main column, ads in the sidebar. Searchers get to see competitors without confusing them for the real thing.
Feels unfair. Guess humans could be hired to try to prevent the situation in cases where it was on the obvious side of what was happening. Would increase the cost of ads or reduce ad network profits, and feel more fair?
If someone searches for a specific product, you could still have competitor ads in a relatively fair way, but you have to put them after the correct link. Putting them first is going to mislead so many people.
And you could advertise related products, or unrelated products. So many options there.
Mandating Google choose the “one right” link is the failure point, here. (Not because I disagree.)
Similar problems with mandating that they track what’s considered a competitor.
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