A couple weeks ago, we blogged about Google’s new inline search feature. For example, search for SeattleTimes.com, and you’ll see this:
Now search for “jobs” in the box (SeattleTimes.com is hosted on NWSource.com), and you’ll see the SeattleTimes.com’s job results surrounded by Google ads for competing Seattle jobs sites. In other words, a user’s intent is to find SeattleTimes.com’s jobs, but Google is luring the user to Times’ competitors. Not to mention, this is allowing users to skip around the Times’ home page and search feature. Says one analyst, “(Users) will really like this because it’s probably a better way to search a site than going to the sites themselves.” And that’s especially true when many sites’ search funtionality is inferior to just searching it on Google in the first place.
As you can imagine, some publishers and online retailers aren’t so happy about this, and apparently Amazon.com has successfully asked for the feature to be removed. Google says it’s done this in “a couple” cases when asked.
