A while back, we had a meltdown about some really awful Google Local and Google Map results. We were clearly not the only ones complaining – in fact, here’s a good article from Danny Sullivan speaking to Sergey Brin about the problems with Google maps and local.
Can you tell I’m about to complain about Google again? Yes here it comes. Matt Cutts, are you listening?
The infinite SEO-PPC loop
I did a Google search for “things to do in Rome” and noticed the #1 natural result was for TripAdvisor. Fair enough, they’re a massive site with many pages of content. They tend to rank well for many searches. Nothing strange about this.
Then I looked at Google’s description of the TripAdvisor page. Sometimes Google displays the page’s meta description. Sometimes Google displays random content from the page, especially if the page content is more relevant to the search query.
My Google search for "things to do in Rome"
In this case I was surprised – to say the least – to see our own website (Viator.com) listed in the page description. Now Viator and TripAdvisor are erstwhile competitors. I would never expect us to have any content on the TripAdvisor page to Rome. So how did that content get there?
Click over and behold! TripAdvisor is publishing Google PPC ads on its Rome page (nothing wrong with that), and Viator.com is paying for a Google PPC ad about things to do in Rome (nothing wrong with that).
So what’s my problem? Well, here’s the thing – Google is essentially using the advertisement Viator has paid for (including the ad copy we wrote, highly targeted to Rome) as part of the scrape of content on this TripAdvisor page.
The Viator PPC ad, which Google is displaying in its natural search results
Think about it – TripAdvisor is winning in 2 ways. First of all, they’re making money from Viator and other advertisers whenever people click on the ads. Fair enough, that’s what ads are for. However TripAdvisor is also getting an SEO boost from Viator (and other advertisers which are listed in the page description). The ad we created is being included in Google’s scrape of the page content, and Google is giving credit to TripAdvisor for having such fantastically taregted content (which Viator created!!) on its page. Annoying.
We write a targeted ad about something. And Google displays that content in the natural results snippet for a competitive website, presumably also giving that website an SEO boost for having our keywords on its page.
That ain’t right!
It means that Google is allowing publishers of its PPC ads to benefit from the ad copy they publish, which is provided by its paying advertisers. This is not how it’s meant to work. Google should not be using AdSense PPC ad copy to influence its own natural search results.
Let me put that more plainly – Google (the search engine) should know better than to use Google (the advertiser) as a factor in its search results. It’s the kind of thing Google would consider spammy and dangerous if another advertiser was doing it. So how come Google gets away with it? Google might say the ad content is not being factored into the SEO rankings, but is only being displayed because the ad content is so clearly relevant to the search query.
But that’s a bogus argument. First of all, PPC ad copy should not be relevant for a natural search query, period, full stop. Second, if that PPC copy is being displayed as part of the natural search results, everybody and their mother will assume some relationship between the page and the snippet.
And there should be no – zero, none! – relationship here. At best, Google is just being sloppy about what content to show in its natural results. At worst, Google is allowing TripAdvisor to channel natural search users to a page where the most relevant content is – lo and behold! – a Google PPC ad, in the hopes users will click on it (thereby making money for both the advertiser and Google).
So Google, which is it?
If you know of other examples like this, let me know. I’m curious what – if anything – Google will do about this.
-Scott McNeely
Post script: Since this was posted, we’ve had an anonymous tipster explain what’s really happening. Alex Bainbridge also wrote a useful blog post about this. It seems this is a TripAdvisor SEO tactic — they’re using the AdSense API to grab targeted ad copy and then embed that (highly optimized) text in the html of the page. This is then crawled by Googlebot, which ‘sees’ the ad copy as part of the page content. Clever. But wrong. And TripAdvisor ought to be punished.
Maybe not, you say, if this practice is not outlawed by the Google AdSense terms & conditions. Well, I’m not bothering to check. Because whether or not it is outlawed, it should be outlawed. And more to the point, Google should simply stop displaying PPC snippets as part of its natural search results. Google, how can you possibly defend this SEO tactic? It’s spammy, pure and simple, and you should not use your own PPC ad copy to influence your natural search results.
Google – just imagine if every single AdSense publisher on the planet used this same tactic. It would quickly make a laughing-stock of your natural search results.
PSS: Kelly posted an excellent article on this over at Search Engine Land, absolutely worth reading.
October 15, 2009 at 6:39 PM
Tripadvisor has been using this dubious SEO practice for years by taking results from the Google Ad API and embedding retrieved text ad content and embedding it as HTML (normally text ads are rendered via script and thus are not “part” of the page).
So Tripadvisor is using your keyword laden ad copy as well as that of other advertisers to bolster its page content relevance with keyword laden ad content using Googles own algorithms to select it.
One would think the supposedly agnostic Google wouldn’t turn a blind eye to this practice but alas it appears certain sites like travel.yahoo.com and tripadvisor.com are special Google citizens — so much for a level playing field …
October 15, 2009 at 7:13 PM
Thanks Anonymous for the tip. Didn’t realize TripAdvisor had been doing this for years. I thought this was a Google problem, but if what you say is true, then it’s clearly a TripAdvisor spam problem. Very interesting.
And highly annoying. Google, what’s your excuse for letting this happen?
Imagine this at the extremes – this is not the internet we signed up for.
October 16, 2009 at 2:25 AM
I asked Google to answer your question and got two replies
http://twitter.com/googletravel/status/4900895274
“@edwinhof, @picturetheuk, @alexbainbridge please see, how Google pages are ranked: http://ow.ly/uGfw thanks!”
http://twitter.com/googletravel/status/4900996146
“@edwinhof, @picturetheuk, @alexbainbridge…Webmaster Central has more detail! Search: http://ow.ly/uGi7”
Neither of which address the question actually (well not directly, perhaps they are hidden deep in the answers somewhere)
Let me think about doing a Tnooz post (http://www.tnooz.com) and see if we can shed some more light on this topic!
October 16, 2009 at 8:02 AM
Thanks Alex, all light we can shed is appreciated.
October 17, 2009 at 1:46 AM
I left a long (second) comment on Alex’s post to point out that this is based more on Viator than on either Google or Tripadvisor. They correctly outrank you for at least 2 very good reasons (better meta title and better h1). In addition, I think you’re lucky Google is using your adsense copy here rather than TA’s own meta description which would almost certainly lead to higher click through rates to TA!
October 17, 2009 at 2:20 PM
Hi Sam.
Thanks for the comment, I saw your longer reply as well.
However your argument doesn’t make much sense to me. I have no problem with TripAdvisor legitimately outranking us. As you say, if they “correctly” outrank us because their page is better, so be it.
But what if they outrank us even partly due to Viator’s own PPC ad copy? How can I ever prove this is not the case?
Google should remove all doubt and force ad publishers like TripAdvisor to tag and treat the AdSense API ads as “paid advertisements” – which is exactly what they are.
Think of it this way – if TripAdvisor was using an ad provider other than Google, and if that alternate ad provider’s copy was appearing in TripAdvisor’s Google natural search results, people would be up in arms about it. They’d call it spam. They’d demand that Google penalize TripAdvisor. Be honest here – you know this is true.
Just because the ad provider in this case happens to be Google, this does not make it any less abusive or spammy. (In fact, that any PPC ad copy is showing up in natural results ought to be a concern to everybody who relies on Google as a search engine.)
Secondly, your point that we are “lucky” Google is displaying our PPC ad copy is missing the point. We don’t want Google to use our ad copy in any way except as ad copy. We don’t create ad copy in order to assist or to harm our competitors. There should be zero correlation between our ad copy and what shows up on our competitors’ natural search results.
So Sam, spare me the “you should feel lucky” sentiments. We’ll take on TripAdvisor any day, head to head, on a level playing field. But this field ain’t level.
What are our choices? Apparently we need to deploy this same SEO tactic in order to compete. We may be the first website on the planet to deploy the Google AdSense API strictly for its SEO benefit.
Seriously Sam, aren’t you a little bit frightened of what Internet search would look like, if every major commercial website did what TripAdvisor is doing, and if Google continues to look the other way and display PPC copy in its natural results?
It’s a frightening prospect.
October 19, 2009 at 10:49 PM
Comiserations, this is understandably frustrating.
Sadly, Google are likely to allow this to continue as essentially they get two cracks at getting a searcher to click their ads and make money for G – first on their own pages, then on Tripadvisors.
Tripadvisor is such a big brand they can get away with far more than you or I – and they have such a strong backlink profile that even an empty page with nothing but ads on it will rank well for searches.
Unfortunately there is little you can do except build more relevant links to try to beat them, and potentially choose not to target ‘Google Search Partners’ (it’s different from the content network) in your Adwords campaign – this will allow your ads to continue to show on Google, but not on search engines like AOL in the US, Orange/Virgin Media in the UK, or websites like Amazon, Ebay and Tripadvisor that use the API.
October 23, 2009 at 5:46 AM
Hello all,
TripAdvisor isn’t using google adsense to enhance the text of our pages. This page, in particular, is optimized for the phrase ‘things to do in rome’, as you will note in the title. It also has great content for things to do in rome (i.e. a great list of attractions that users have rated highly).
I have no idea why google chooses to show the viator snippet in the description in the SERP. Most of the time google doesn’t. We have implemented adsense as google has told us to, and they have approved the implementation. I hardly think we should be ‘punished’ for doing what google tells us to do with adsense, nor are we ‘fooling’ anyone in any way with this page as being highly relevant for things to do in rome.
In terms of whether the viator ad text helps our page… if we thought having one more instance of ‘things to do in rome’ would help the SEO of the page, we would just add it as text to the page, rather than hope that viator is buying that keyword in google and uses that important phrase in their teaser text.
Sincerely,
Steve
October 23, 2009 at 8:13 AM
Steve –
Likely you’re an impostor, but if not – we’re flattered the CEO of TripAdvisor is a reader of Viator’s Travel Blog. Good on ya.
If you’re legit, as one your advertisers we’d love to have a serious dialogue on this issue, let us know where we can reach you.
October 25, 2009 at 6:13 PM
Hi Scott,
Are you a Robert Heinlein fan? I can’t think of a ‘brass cannon’ equivelent to signing my posting here
But you can reach me at kaufer at tripadvisor dot com.
Steve
December 20, 2009 at 4:22 PM
Is anybody of authority talking to Google about how they are flat our RUINING their search engine with travel-oriented local biz results? I am getting total crap results, mostly from TripAdvisor or half-assed Google MyMaps, which are ranking above my own optimized pages. I’ve been happy to compete head to head with other competitors for 10 years, but when Google totally side-steps the rest of us by putting TripAdvisor results on the first HALF of the page, what are the rest of us to do?