Protect Your Site from Brand-Negative Search

Part 2: Control Your Contextual Ads

Think allowing contextual ads on your site will help you win revenues? You might want to think again. In January 2004, we visited Amazon.com to search for Hugh Johnson’s latest Wine Atlas. Scrolling down the page yielded the typical “Buy Together” admonitions, “Customers who bought this book also bought…” and then, a “Sponsored Link” section.

Surprisingly then (perhaps not so surprising now), the first “sponsored” result was a link to Barnes & Noble along with an offer to buy Hugh Johnson’s book over at Barnes & Noble instead. As Amazon’s top book competitor, Barnes & Noble had found a prominent place on this book giant’s site thanks to Google’s Ad Words service.



For those not familiar with Sponsored Links and perhaps a little perplexed at the competitive listing, Amazon offers a “What’s This?” link to explain.

Sponsored Links are advertisements that Amazon.com provides to you. We receive Sponsored Links from Google's AdWords service. When you click on a Sponsored Link, we get revenue. The selection of Sponsored Links that are displayed is based on keywords. For example, if you search for "Bruce Springsteen" or view pages about Bruce Springsteen, the Sponsored Links may point to sites that sell tickets to his concerts or provide information about him. Sponsored Links are always clearly labeled.

Generating additional revenue from Sponsored Links allows us to offer lower prices to you--something we are dedicated to doing every way we can.

While we understand the logic, we do not condone the result. Amazon’s reason for supplying the AdWords “service” is to gain click-through revenue in an attempt to drop retail prices. But supplying easy links to direct competitors carrying the same product for a competitive price is not good business. That logic is akin to Home Depot handing out flyers for Lowe’s and then whisking customers away in an air-conditioned shuttle bus to go buy the drill they were just about to purchase from Home Depot at Lowe’s instead.

Next month, we’ll explore why general search technology fails the brand-building test and how to avoid these common pitfalls on your site.