on 09 December 2009 
(1.00 rating)
Google says it has no plans to extend its recently launched Comparison Ads project to include products from the travel vertical.
The confirmation comes during a busy week for Google as it rolls out the real-time search, boosts it mobile play and launches the photo search Goggles application.
The Comp Ads scheme was unveiled in October 2009 and creates a list of mortgage products automatically taken from paid-for ads included in its AdWords system.
The launch signalled what could be a fascinating expansion of the AdWords programme, allowing companies bidding on certain keywords to find their product included in a basic yet reasonably intuitive metasearch proforma.
Extending Comparison Ads into travel might have been an interesting experiment, not least to see how its relationship with intermediaries may have been affected, as some argued here.
Google however appears content to keep the service within the financial services sector for the time being.
An official at Google UK says:
“We don’t have any plans to extend comparison ads beyond the current format, or extend it to any other verticals.”
And that’s the end of that. Maybe.
Related posts:
The consensus at Search Engine Strategies Chicago was that comparison shopping ads, like the mortgage example, represented the future of search.
You can quote me with this prediction: “In an effort to provide a richer search experience & more relevant information, search engines will be a major player in the SERP space by aggregating content.”
Specifically, the provision of structured data by content providers was called out as a #1 trend by Justin Merickel of Efficient Frontiers during the Future of Search session at the conference.
The search engines will continue to provide more information and media rich SERPS – To see a good travel example, take a look at Bing.
Enter LAX NYC as a search query. You will receive the following returned as the top organic search response:
a) Cheap tickets from Los Angeles to New York (Link to calendar and fare / date line chart detail page for LAX-NYC fares
b) Fares Predicted to Rise or Hold Steady Graphic (Green Rising Arrow)
c) $226 LAX>LGA (Links to same page as above)
d) All deals from Los Angeles (Lowest fares from LAX to any destination for various time frames)
d) All deals to New York (Lowest fares to New York from any origin for various time frames)
e) 30-Day Outlook for LAX>LGA (fare / date line chart and detailed price listings with search and comparison shopping options
It is assumed that this page will be enhanced some time in the future to include detailed hover text and full page multi-media ad presentations.
Your contact at Google was either a) lying, b) ill-informed, or c) communicating a strategy that will cause Google to lose share in travel search.
If Google does not provide comparison shopping ads in the organic search results based on structured data, they will be violating their own core commitment to provide the user with the most relevant and well-organized information.
Given Bing’s recently announced JV with Wolfram|Alpha, search will get more advanced – breaking the current page paradigm and moving toward the integration of data from various sources to provide the proverbial holy grail of search – a context-sensitive semantic response that provides the single best search result for the user.