Will Google's New 'Search-Within-a-Search' Boost Revenues?

Google (GOOG) has introduced a new, more intrusive search-within-search feature that will be welcomed by consumers but will hurt e-commerce and many news sites by placing ads from competitors of the sites on those sites, the NY Times reports. So far, the new search-within-a-search feature has been turned off at Amazon.com (AMZN), and other web publishers are evaluating it, according to the Times. Key graphs from nytimes.com:

This month, the company introduced a search-within-search feature that lets users stay on Google to find pages on popular sites like those of The Washington Post, Wikipedia, The New York Times, Wal-Mart and others. The search box appears when someone enters the name of certain Web addresses or company names — say, “Best Buy” — rather than entering a request like “cellphones.” The results of the search are almost all individual company pages. Google tops those results with a link to the home page of the Web site in question, adds another search box, and offers users the chance to let Google search for certain things within that site. The problem, for some in the industry, is that when someone enters a term into that secondary search box, Google will display ads for competing sites, thereby profiting from ads it sells against the brand. The feature also keeps users searching on Google pages and not pages of the destination Web site.

Investors in GOOG may cheer the new technology, because it could increase the company's advertising revenues. But investors in the large retailers and in companies that sell advertising on their sites will be watching the development carefully. The new feature could complicate search engine optimization [SEO] for many web sites. But the CEO of Forbes.com isn't worried. He believes the big brand sites like Forbes.com, Washingtonpost.com and nytimes.com are such strong brands that they won't lose many viewers to advertisers on GOOG, according to the Times.

But print publishers have under estimated GOOG before, and a lot of them may tell GOOG to turn off the search within a search functionality on their sites. GOOG closed Thursday at $433.55 and has a point and figure chart bearish price objective of $380.

What does search-within-a-search mean for GOOG in terms of increased revenues, and what will it do to the major retailers and publishers' revenues, if anything?

Disclosure: I don't have a position in AMZN or GOOG, but my investment club owns GOOG.

Comments

[Roloc]

There is and always has been a way to block google from indexing pages. This is a tech issue for the own companies to resolve. They should try googling for robots.txt and learn how to configure their web server.

[Donald E.L. Johnson]

Yes, and the question is, how many will do that?

[David Lentz]

If the people running their web sites do not know about robots.txt, they have no business drawing a paycheck.

Any responsible business will have considered the question of whether they experience a net benefit from being included in Google's search results, and will have set their robots.txt file accordingly.

This is NOT high tech, or obscure tweaking. It is a simple effective way to manage web access to their sites by search engines, and you will find references to its use on the same pages that discuss how to have one's web site listed in Google/Yahoo/Ask/whome...