Thursday, April 20, 2006
Google Base Car Search Introduced In Natural Results
While doing some query checking this am I noticed my normally friendly Google results had been moved further down the page and in their place was a query refinement form for a car search. I figured this was to increase the amount of users to Google Base so they can soon monetize it once it has met a minimum threshold of users and feels comfident they will be able to compete with eBay in their own way and still make money.It was quite annoying though. Especially since I was looking for actual information on the environmental impact of the vehicle and not shopping for a car. Yesterday a stir broke out about the AdSense bot adding the content of sites in the AdSense network directly to the Google search index and thus having higher rankings due to fresher content on those sites... which is the first legitimate claim I've heard from anyone that Google has started to tamper with their results. Then today I'm greeted with a car search refinement tool (which is obviously geared at selling cars from Google Base - just look at all the listings from Cars.com in this screenshot). It's quite clear Google is bending to Wall Street and doing whatever they can to generate more revenue but it also appears they may have started cutting corners.
I'm not sure if the car search refinement tool will be on all car results or if they're just testing things for the time being but it's annoying and I'd like the real Google to stand up please.
Posted By Jason Dowdell at 09:34 AM
Permanent Link: Google Base Car Search Introduced In Natural Results
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