A debate here on Tnooz in October 2009 saw all manner of opinions flying in about the merits – or not – of placing content above the imaginary fold-line on a website.
But it is probably worth applying the same scrutiny to search engines.
Until reasonably recently, firing in the search term “hotel new york” on Google, for example, would see organic results taking up the vast majority of top half of the page, displayed alongside paid-for AdWords in a narrow right-hand navigation bar.
Not any more.
The addition of maps has fundamentally changed the make-up of search results – so much so that all the inventory above the fold is commercially supported.
So while many will see this as a natural inevitability of Google’s creeping commercialisation, does it effect how users interact with natural results or increase the apparent relevancy or perceived reliability of paid-for links?
Some more on this subject here from SEO Book.
Am I wrong in thinking that the local business results links are NOT paid for though?
Tamara: Google sells premium listings to local map ads.
How naive of me! I thought they were natural…
I’m fairly sure that the mapped results are organic. Google has always been careful to identify (to the user) which results are paid/sponsored, and this is shown in the screenshot above.
From the Google Map Search FAQ (http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=18671):
“With AdWords, you will pay Google to run your ads near our unpaid search results, and your ads will be clearly marked as sponsored advertising”