It looks like Google doesn’t have to play by their own rules in the UK market. Google Blogoscoped reports that if you search for “secured loans” in the UK, there is a sponsored results from Google that does not follow Google’s own editorial guidelines. Their display URL is much longer, they have 3 description lines, they use the superlative “best” and if that isn’t enough, they also have a dropdown menu with a call to action button! Is this a sign of things to come here in the US?
A bigger question. If Google is manually manipulating their ads to their liking, what else are they manipulating within the system?
Update:
While this is a CPA program test, it doesn’t truly explain Google going against their policy of one advertiser per search. This type of program would allow the advertisers involved to basically double list - once on the search results page, and then once within Google’s program giving them a greater chance of attracting a customer. Google’s whole premise on arbitrage sites is that it’s bad for the user experience to take them from one search results page to another. While Google is providing some additional value by filtering out the companies based on rates, what they’re doing on a basic level is arbitrage.
I’m not sure if this also pushes one advertiser to the side bar results (from the yellow bar), but if so, this also creates more pressure for those seeking volume to either bid higher to acheive top listings or to join Google’s program.
Depending on the CPA costs to the advertiser, this could be great for the large advertisers while the advertisers with smaller budgets will see their volume go down.
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It’s from a new service that Google has in beta called Merchant Search. Looks like a CPA program.