February 27th, 2007
Google SERP favors Google Checkout
Google continues to find new ways to make sure Google searchers can't ignore the Google Checkout merchants Google is subsidizing through 2007 (maybe even 2008!).
In "Google Checkout: Where’s the love?" and “Google Checkout is a loser, really” I discuss the difficulties Google is having in gaining significant traction with merchants and the negative financial impact of merchant and consumer subsidies on Google's financial performance.
Google nevertheless perseveres, with both subsidies and prime Google Checkout placement in Google SERPs.
Google has already promised to cover the costs of credit card processing on behalf of Google Checkout merchant Checkout transactions through 2007. Will Google continue the costly largesse through 2008? Google's own Google AdSense "Ads by Goooooogle" say so!
Google is not only exploiting is AdSense network to "sell" Google Checkout, it is preempting the "most relevant" Google search results to favor its own Google Checkout above the "organic" Google SERPs.
In product searches, Google is driving searchers to Google Checkout clients at Froogle, as shown below. A Google self-promo for Google Checkout merchants selling "Microsoft Office 2007 Standard" points searchers to Checkout merchants in Google's Froogle listings, before Google's "most relevant" search results.
Google is doing everything in its power to increase Checkout adoption, except for the one thing that would truly make a difference, a change in the fundamentally flawed Google Checkout philosophy, SEE "Google Checkout: $20 million AdWords pitch."
