I was very pleased to see John Battelle exposing the “second click” issue from the pulpit at SES, and in his influential SearchBlog. If you have done any occasional reading through my lowly blog, you’ll recognize the concept of the “third page of search“. It’s the same thing - the issue surrounding Google’s shift within its Search Result Page to bias users towards it’s own version of vertical search experiences.
Of late, this issue has become increasingly visible with Google’s blatant behavior of pushing Google owned/operated “third page search services” into top position on the results page. In local we recognize it with the 10-list box, in video you see it with YouTube bias, in real estate we see it with Google’s home search, in auto, we’re starting to see Google vehicle search. With Google’s recently announced “knol“, you see it’s version of Wikipedia in formation.
Because I’m lazy/busy as heck these days, I’ve copied my reply in John’s blog (down below), to give you a bit of added perspective on how I see this in-formation battle.
This is a really important one, and it’s fascinating because - above all else - it is the closest thing I have seen to a shift which creates an opening for Google to be truly challenged. It demonstrates their hunger/greed pushing them to mess with the fundamental trust (and entrenched identity) with consumers - the trust to put the “best answers” at the top, and the derivative belief that Google won’t push product in front of me.
The ramifications could be huge for how Google progresses with the consumer. I recall marveling a couple of years ago when we did research in which consumers commented that if a Google search result didn’t get their desired result “they were not using it properly”. The implicit belief in Google to “get it right” is at the very heart of their brand and differentiation. Google is messing with this, and the fragility of consumer trust should not be underestimated.
reply post to Battelle Post:
It’s great to see this issue being exposed more for conversation, John. It really is surprising to me that Google is taking this level of risk (albeit small as of today in the grand scheme) to the ONE THING above all others that got them where they are.
To the mass market, Google’s SERP experience is their core identity. The deep ruts they have caved into this road must be maddening to their creative spirit and invention hunger. You call this the second click, I’ve called it the “third page of search” battle - both concepts are the same, but Google’s identity and user experience ruts are carved deeply, and consumers are creatures of habit above all else. (I like third page because I think of this as driving the derivative user experience as you proceed down the user intent path, a multi-phase process which demands unique vertical experiences for maximum consumer value).
I do believe Google is messing with their core identity and when this is shaken - as it should be with these “antics” - there is a risk, a crack in the armor - alas, an opening! I call it antics because it is happening on top of the consumer’s naive and implicit trust which up until recently has been well earned.
What is surprising to me is that in many cases, the quality of results and (not to be underplayed) user experience is a very poor substitution for the quality of what a user can get on “third page sites” - vertical, local, topical web sites where the user can be freed of the plain vanilla wrapper that Google’s success has forced it to honor.
I recently had Google put their “Vehicle Search” in front of all other results and tried it out. Frankly it was sad to see the results. While “technically” it presented a good matrix of makes, models, location search, it was such a starkly anemic user experience when compared with a half dozen known destination sites which combine deep content and user community. Consumers will see this, and they will start to build skepticism into their evaluation of Google’s SERP quality.
It’s a great flag to raise, and it’s a very meaty topic for discussion. Well done!
Look for this to become a serious industry conversation.
