Google users will soon see consumer reviews and product ratings placed inside Google AdWords as yet another slice of the search engine’s “experimentation” is revealed.
Announced at a conference earlier this week and later on the Google Merchant Blog, Product Reviews Program is a scheme to throw reviews inside existing AdSense copy for products.
Here is an example from the eyewear sector:
Users see a short message outlining what is the product’s “rating”. Clicking through on the link will take users to a page with full product reviews.
Google has kicked off the scheme with the help of Bazaarvoice, a provider of user review systems to some of the biggest retail brands on the web including – from the travel sector – Thomas Cook, Norwegian Cruise Line, SpaFinder and eDreams.
Information from their respective review systems will only be included if they agree to participate.
There is a strange paradox to this scheme from the advertiser’s perspective:
- To be involved may lay open, for example, a company’s hotel property to an aggregated review, which might be less than favourable.
- Including reviews underneath ad copy, however, could make the message more dynamic and increase the chance of a user clicking through.
Certainly from the hotel sector’s perspective it would be intriguing to hear the reaction if TripAdvisor agreed to be a review partner with Google, effectively throwing an aggregated ranking for each it its 450,000 hotels in the database into Google AdSense.
In the wider picture of Google-related news this week – namely the Google-ITA Software takeover rumour – this latest piece of functionality is not a show-stopper.
It is, however, another example of what Google is slowly but surely doing to ramp up the information it provides when users carry out a simple search.
Pic credit: Rimmkaufman.com
Related posts:
- Move to create system combining star ratings and user generated reviews for hotels
- Google extends Comparison Ads drive, hints that travel is in its sights
- Google has high hopes for upper-funnel AdWords
- TripAdvisor leverages user reviews to name top movie hotels
- Copyright is a critical consideration for travel consumer reviews
This will make everything even more radically transparent. No need to seek out a review site first. Get that info right on the search result page. More reason for travel providers to closely monitor the conversation. Nowhere to hide!
The next thing Google will do is put a Facebook Like button under each ad:)
Does Google really think advertisers want copy in their ads over which they have no control? Whata bizarre idea.
Wow…I think Google has lost their mind! It’s just an ad…and they are just a search engine. This reeks of spammers going and writing bogus reviews targeting the competition and hoping that you won’t be paying attention.
Maybe this will end up like their Print ads program, just hope it doesn’t take as long…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/technology/internet/21google.html
Google places and Google adsense have so many problems and now they want to throw this into the mix. Someone is really not thinking. If you go to google forums and see all the problems business owners are desperately seeking solutions for with no help at all from google, shows Google is really loosing all credibility as far as “business services”. They seem to offer more ways to hurt than help.