Digital Crosstalk

Google suggests you click this ad!

Posted by Brian | Filed under blogging

Google Suggest, the handy drop-down suggestion tool has begun incorporating adverts into its search suggestions. If you’re not familiar with Google Suggest, it’s the handy feature that appears in the Google toolbar and in many cases the Google homepage.

Although only currently visible to a fraction of searchers, the ads are likely to become more universal over the next few months.

At the moment it seems a lot of the adverts appear as the first listing which may be the downfall of the test. Although labelled as a ’sponsored link’ and shaded in much the same way as AdWords, having adverts come up as the first result may create a lot of false positives.

Not solely focusing on sponsored listing, Google is also trailing links to its news site which will soon become one of its core advertising platforms.

Google’s plans to increase advertising revenues are not going unnoticed. In November of this year, Google eased up the restrictions on alcohol and gambling websites. No doubt having ads in the search suggest will generate Google a lot of money with people innocently clicking the links, but will it do the advertisers any real favours and will searchers start to get ticked off?

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4. 200 Children Targeted om ‘Bebo’ Swoop

Tags: digital