Search Marketers Beware: Google’s Site-Search Feature Gobbles Web Site Identity, says brand expert

John Federman (CEO of Guidester, an e-commerce ad network for “major brand manufacturers”) recently warned online marketers in E-Commerce Times about Google’s Search-Within-a-Site feature launched this past March.

In brief, Google’s search-within-a-site is supposed to help users who want more drilled-down info from their first search attempt. A searcher types a company name – maybe yours – into the search field, which pulls their selected vendor – you again – into top results. Sounds terrific on the Brand Awareness Meter, doesn’t it?

Then, it gets kinky: a SECOND search bar appears under Google’s site descriptions to help the user narrow a search query to specific types of products. (We know how lazy searchers are. So anything that minimizes clicks, refines queries or pushes lots of related results is presumed Good.)

But, what’s good for the user is “dangerous” for the e-tailer, according to Federman. While that user is getting narrowed search results and abundantly helpful similar offerings, he or she has yet to get into YOUR web site. Even after typing YOUR company name in the search box.

The searcher is being held in Google second-search-box limbo. Just to rub salt in your search marketing wounds, at the same time, the user is bombarded with many vendors or products that compete with you. Thanks to AdWords.

So much for establishing brand awareness for your company and its products. Your reward for snagging potential customers – who even typed your company name into the search box – is having your carefully architected web site firewalled from your brand aware customer. Your branding efforts helped launch the AdWords fleet of competitor search advertising ships. And, you get to watch traffic, sales and page views sink from your own optimized web site. Such a deal??

Just Say No, says brand manager Federman. (Meaning: Give Google the Opt Out.) Even Bob Tedeschi, who has covered online issues since Internet Bubble 1.0 in the late 1990s for The New York Times, declared the bottom line results of Google’s NEW IMPROVED site search to be “egalitarian” in spirit, but “messy at best.”