Using Search Engines Incorrectly can Cost You Money

 

Use search engines as search engines, not as your personal bookmarks pages or a phone books or 411 when you can’t remember a website’s URL.

You know websites have names, right? They are called URLs. Here’s an example:

amazon.com

You can go to the URL field in your browser and you can type “amazon.com” and get right to Amazon. OR you can type “amazon” in your browser and your default search engine will engage and display a page of web sites that match the word “amazon.”

This will include the Amazon River, the Amazon Basin, and sometimes, if Amazon has paid Google enough, right at the top of the page, the Amazon.com website you want to go to. So, you click the top link.

Did you know that most of the time the top three listings on Google are paid listings? Advertisers like Amazon.com (and my company, too) pay Google to be placed at the top of the page, and some of those listings are VERY expensive.

When you click that top link, Amazon has to pay the search engine company for the privilege of switching you to Amazon.com because you didn’t want to just type “amazon.com.”

At my company when I buy the top spot for the phrase “online backup software” or even my own company name, “Remote Backup Systems,” I pay Google as much as $18.00 every time you click on my listing. Eighteen freekin’ dollars a click!! Whether you buy something or not, I have to pay Google $18.

That is a HUGE expense for companies. And guess what? We have to pass that expense on to you in the form of higher prices. Books cost more at Amazon because you want to type “amazon” instead of “amazon.com.”

Remember before you had all your phone numbers on your cell phone and you had to remember numbers, or look them up in the “phone book” or call Directory Assistance (411) to ask for the number? Remember when the phone company started charging 99 cents for each call to 411 and you got your first bill with 24 charges for 99 cents each and freaked out, vowing to remember your numbers or save them on your phone because it was too expensive to call 411?

If you use Google like you used 411, everybody loses except, of course, Google. I lose $18 every time you click and I have to raise your prices to compensate.

But some search engine listings don’t cost me a dime. Click those. Here’s an easy way to spot which search engine listings cost companies money and which ones don’t.

At the top of the search engine pages there is usually a box of a slightly different color than the background. They make those boxes only slightly different in color on purpose, so you might overlook them, or not see the color difference at all because of your monitor settings.

The listings in that box (usually one to three listings) are PAID listings. If you click them, Google will charge the company some money. The amount they charge depends on a number of strange factors like how “relevant” the page linked to the listing is (and the rules for relevancy change about every 48-72 hours), who is currently bidding on that top spot in an automated ebay-like auction with its own strange and changing rules, the time of day, and nobody knows what else.

So, we cannot predict how much those listings cost. We just deposit some money with Google and they take their charges out of it. When they want more of our money they tell us and we deposit more. We trust them, I guess. What alternative do we have?

Likewise there might be a vertical stack of listings along the right side of the page. These are also paid listings, but they are not as expensive as the top three.

These paid listings are also unfair. For example, if you type in the name of my company, “Remote Backup Systems” the top three listings will be companies who paid Google to show their ads at the top of the page whenever you type in my company name – my competitors trying to trick you into going to their websites instead of mine.

The fourth listing is really me. The fourth listing is actually the first listing in what is called “natural” listings.

The other listings on the page, with a background color the same as the margins, are “natural” listings. If you click one of those nobody gets charged. Those listings are free. Sort of. In this rant I’m not going to shout about what it takes to get on the first page near the top in the natural listings. My blood pressure will spike.

Here are the takeaways.

1. If you already know which website you want to go to, just type its name with the dot com (or whatever it has at the end,) like this: “amazon.com” or “remote-backup.com”
2. If you don’t know which website you want, but you know the company name, use a search engine, but look at the natural listings first. Click there instead of in the paid listings.
3. Don’t trust the paid listings except for #4 below. ANY company can pay Google to be listed at the top of the page for ANY search phrase, and they are cutthroat competitive, misleading, and bordering on fraudulent.
4. It’s OK to trust the paid listings if you have no clue what website or company you are looking for. Just realize that those paid listings are advertisements, quite different from the natural listings below, and must conform to FAR fewer rules.

 

Rob Cosgrove is the President of Remote Backup Systems, founder of the Online Backup Industry, and a vocal advocate for maintaining the highest standards in Online Backup software. His latest book, the Online Backup Guide for Service Providers: How to Start and Operate an Online Backup Service, is available online now, on Amazon.com, and at bookstores.

Remote Backup Systems provides brandable, scalable software and solutions to MSPs and VARs enabling them to offer Online Backup Services.