Google claims to care about “user experience” especially when it comes to quality score and their advertising policies, so I find it curious that Google forces businesses to bid higher to appear in the top position for queries that are clearly brand related (see case below for Chartis Travel Insurance).
Such practice by Google will clearly result in a bad user experience for users who are clearly looking for a specific brand related product but finding a different advertiser in the top ad position don’t you think? Off course forcing business to bid more means more money for Google.
Please note that this is not a brand bidding issue as the competitor, 1cover in this case, was most likely bidding on the broad match term “travel insurance” however, the search query entered by the user clearly indicates an intent to find travel insurance offered by a specific provider and Google should take that into account if it really cares about user experience.
21 July 2011
Topics: Digital News & Insights, SEM & SEO