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Google's Paid Search vs. Organic Results – A Rickety Wall of Separation
By Scott Buresh (c) 2007 Medium Blue
(http://www.mediumblue.com/)

"Chinese Wall - The ethical (not physical) barrier between
different divisions of a financial (or other) institution to
avoid conflict of interest..."
Investopedia.com

"While Google never sells better ranking in our search results,
several other search engines combine pay-per-click or
pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search
results."
Google's Webmaster Help Center FAQ

"NO pay for inclusion, and a complete separation of the search
index part from the money part."
Google Chief Engineer Craig Neville-Manning, Search Engine
Strategies 2004

The good people at Google have long maintained that there is a
Chinese Wall between paid search results and organic results –
that is, the department responsible for advertising is
completely separate from the department responsible for organic
search engine placement. The company insists that Google
Adwords is a completely separate entity than the Google search
engine, and never the twain shall meet. This all sounds very
good, in theory. But do they live up to this ideal in
practice?

You don't hear Google talking much about Chinese Walls these
days. This is certainly in part because they have had great
difficulty gaining traction in the literal and very competitive
Chinese market (headlines such as "Google Hits Chinese Wall"
or even "Google Advance Halted at Great Wall of China" were
commonplace). But might there be other, more nefarious reasons?
Is there a reason why we hear less and less from Google about
the virtual wall that separates paid search results from organic
search engine placement?

What Is Google Really Doing for Its Big Spenders?

It has long been rumored that Google will offer technical
assistance in achieving better organic search engine placement
to those who spend more for paid search results. I know for
certain that these rumors are true in at least two instances.
In fact, I actually have the minutes from one of these technical
assistance meetings after the company met with Google engineers.
While the identity of these two companies is irrelevant,
suffice to say that they are companies that you have almost
certainly heard of and that they spend millions of dollars on
paid search words each year.

To be fair, based on the meeting minutes I have, the advice that
the engineers gave to the company does not include anything
groundbreaking. It is mostly common sense advice that a good
search engine optimization firm already knows about organic
search engine placement and other issues, and much of it is
already covered in the publicly-available Google Webmaster
Guidelines. This, however, is beside the point. Google has
obviously decided that it must offer perks to its big paid
search spenders to keep them happy (or rather, happy enough to
not pull their advertising). Clearly, one of these perks is
access to Google engineers and the ability to glean information
about organic search engine placement, a luxury that smaller
advertisers do not enjoy.

Organic Search Engine Placement for Sale – The New Google
Reality?

From a business perspective, this makes perfect sense, of
course. Big-dollar advertisers make up the bulk of Google's
revenue for paid search, and any intelligent business will take
whatever steps they deem necessary to hold on to their most
valuable customers. This is why larger advertisers already have
a designated account representative from Google. I am willing
to bet that this perk was not Google's idea. Rather, it almost
certainly stemmed from the sense of entitlement that those
spending large sums on paid search felt and the fact that
technical help with their organic search engine placement is
what they demanded.

Unfortunately, this reality leaves an advertiser with a small
budget for paid search at a disadvantage. If Google is willing
to offer this secret perk to larger advertisers now, what might
they do in the future? Offer price breaks to larger paid search
spenders? Increase the minimum monthly spend to squeeze out
smaller companies and please the larger ones? It certainly has
the potential to become a slippery slope, and I am interested to
see where it goes next.

One final point – since Google is willing to give advice about
organic search engine placement to companies that spend a great
deal of money on Google advertising, is the phrase "While
Google never sells better ranking in our search results..." truly
accurate? I suppose this is open for interpretation. It may be
technically true, but offering advice regarding organic search
engine placement straight from the horse's mouth in exchange
for millions of dollars in money for paid search results isn't
far from selling rankings, in my opinion.

Conclusion

Please don't get me wrong – I still believe that Google is the
best search engine out there, I greatly admire the way that they
are continually reinventing themselves, and I think they are
still the target for those seeking the most benefit from organic
search engine placement. They have the folks in Redmond
constantly guessing and always three steps behind, and I love
how they have started from humble beginnings to take on one of
the biggest corporations in the world (and consistently win). I
simply believe that they have played the underdog,
anti-corporate card for too long, and that even if it has not
outlived its usefulness, it has outlived its truthfulness.
Google is now a huge multinational corporation that answers to
its shareholders. To pretend anything otherwise is silly, but
it seems that, for now at least, the charade will continue.

Google's overriding principle, one that they have been happy to
espouse to the media, has long been "Don't Be Evil." Whether
they still adhere to this principle since they have become a
public company is another question that is open for
interpretation. If you are a smaller advertiser and feel that
Google's favoritism toward larger paid search customers
regarding organic search engine placement is evil, it probably
seems as though the "Don't Be Evil" principle no longer
applies. You may conclude that the principles of "Don't Be
Evil" and "Keep Shareholders Happy" are mutually incompatible,
and that the latter has gained the upper hand.
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Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named
the number one search engine optimization company
(http://www.mediumblue.com/) in the world by PromotionWorld.
Scott has contributed content to many publications including
Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004),
MarketingProfs, ZDNet, Organic Rankings, WebProNews, DarwinMag,
SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue
serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific,
DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.
Download Medium Blue's latest exclusive whitepaper
(http://www.mediumblue.com/free-whitepaper.php), "Adding Search
to Your Marketing Mix," for more insight.
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