A growing trend for site search is to license a Web search provider, most often Google, to provide users with Web-wide results in addition to site-specific results. The concept can be favorable to the browsing experience, as searchers are encouraged to “find what they’re looking for” via your site. Revenue opportunities are also possible when sponsored links are included in the mix.

The problem lies in the lack of control sites receive with Web-wide results. Take for instance, sports coverage giant SportsIllustrated.com (SI.com).

SI.com uses a Google “enhanced” search bar. We typed “College Football” in the search bar expecting to get a list of SI articles and content. Instead, we were presented with five paid placements (from Google) and a list of unpaid search results.

At the time of this writing, the top unpaid search result was a link to ESPN.com; SI.com’s competition! This is an objectionable result for SI.com.

We repeated the search and restricted the results to SI.com. We got this response:

No Article matches for “College Football” on SI.com

This is exactly the kind of search result that causes users to become frustrated.

The Google “enhanced” search generated links to SI’s competitors, and the search technology SI.com uses for its site is unsophisticated and inadequate.

Another example of search ranking difficulties can be seen at Washingtonpost.com, where a Web search for “Washington newspaper” supplies near 1 ½ pages of results before Washingtonpost.com is even listed. A searcher at Washingtonpost.com wouldn’t likely look for Washingtonpost.com while at the site, but their brand still suffers from unfortunate search ranking.

Before you install generic Web search technology, you’ll want to consider whether you can control the results. Next month we’ll explore the deficiencies of contextual ads and will follow up with how to avoid the common pitfalls created by them. You can profit from outside search results and protect your brand. Stay tuned!

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