Quality of a Search Engine

Folks in this room understand that the quality of a search engine depends heavily on the relevance of advertising, and the relevance of advertising relies on the volume of bids.

Steve Ballmer, MSFT

Sorry, Steve but I beg to differ. This was a quote from the SMX West show in March 2010. While I get his point, and he was speaking to a room of search marketers, there is something flawed about his logic.

When Google started its upward climb, it was not the leader in advertising. Overture (GoTo, Yahoo, whatever) was. People started using Google because the results were relevant, natural and paid. Trust was given to the brand, and that is when “google” became a verb. You don’t become a part of societal vocabulary by getting advertising right. Steve is missing a few vital parts of the puzzle, and that seems to always be the issue over at Microsoft.

The piece that is missing is the relevant results that bring in users. These results build trust in the brand. Returning users build the user base (traffic) which brings in advertisers, and advertisers bring in money and ads. Those ads do make the results more relevant, but it is not the ads that drive initial user trust and participation.

Disclaimer: I have not done research on this, and someone could easily prove me wrong. This post is from a marketing psychology point of view.

The quality of Google right now may be its ad network. Everyone knows that it is what makes Google so powerful. But any competitor to Google is going to have to understand that replacing that trust will have to occur to get users to switch.

I always hear advertisers say “I only use Google AdWords because, while it’s more expensive and the other networks convert better, the volume is just not there.” Remember that at higher volumes, generally, it is more difficult to convert. This is why you never just increase bids to be #1 in the ad line up. It’s not always profitable to be #1. There is a double meaning there MSFT.

Just something to think about.