Comments on: Search Within A Search – Good Idea?

By: James

James — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:40:53 +0000

I don’t think that search boxes within SERPs are best suited for e-commerce web-sites, I think they should only be used for sites that contain a lot of information, for example Wikipedia (Which does have search boxe within SERP). Like you said, you cannot see images like you can on Froogle.

By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:26:01 +0000

Good observation. Sponsored links do appear for certain search terms, although I’d imagine click through on them would be far lower if your preference is to search Amazon.com (based on good experiences in the past or other reasons).

However, if there is a compelling call to action in AdWords it could steal a click away, it’s possible. Or if there are simply no results or very bad results, these alternatives are right there…so in a way that’s easier on the searcher who would have to start the search over again if he/she were actually on Amazon searching.

From an advertiser’s point of view, I’d like to pay my content network bid price for this kind of impression, rather than the search network bid price – simply because you’d expect a searcher’s mindset to be different than searching for a product. Rather, the searcher is searching for a product within a specific site with the intention of clicking through to that website.

I doubt these impressions are treated as content bids. That would also exclude all advertisers who have opted out of the content network.

By: chs

chs — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:27:42 +0000

I would like to bring out a point that no one, points out,
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i see this search within search feature as a way for Google to cross sell products / ‘MERCHANTS’,

basically where this happens is that for example: I’m doing a search on Google for amazon.com > than I’m searching in the search within search box for apple on amazon.com [and the reason is because I like Amazon so I’m going directly to them] – try it out for yourself you will find that there is sponsored links on that page even if you are searching only from within amazon.com
Now this is a way of being able for Google to make more money and promotes your competitors products on your search results page.
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Just me observation –

By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:46:35 +0000

Hi Matthew,
I don’t see how this is valuable for ecommerce sites, but I can understand for information sites and blogs. For example, I was searching today for “internet retailer chat” to bring up an article I read yesterday. Of course Google decides which of potentially hundreds of pages on that site is relevant. It would have helped to have the site search right there on Google. Of course, I.R. has its own search box only one click away from the SERP.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:20:03 +0000

The way it is supposed to work is explained on the google blog :
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/search-within-site-tale-of.html

But it doesn’t seam to work the way they describe as you mentionned in your post!
In France instead of the search box, we get : other search results on the same domain as a text-link.