I did a search for Marks and Spencer’s this morning and noticed that there was a new google  “search Marksandspencer.com” button there so I popped “Flowers” in there and clicked search.

The results were displayed on Google as usual but it had done a site search on Marks and Spencers for me, which is fine from a user point of view, it saved me having to to to Marks and Spencers and then search for flowers.

From a webmaster point of view this is bad news though and will result in traffic loss in my opinion as the user hits Google with your brand / site in mind and is then given another chance to click a competing advert or brand and go elsewhere although on the plus side perhaps conversion will be increased as users may find what they seek on your site more easily (if Google has been able to index it properly), I guess only time will tell for sure.

Normally after doing a search for M&S I’d have clicked the link for their site and gone there when the results were presented, and being exposed to their site and offers etc. and M&S would have every opportunity to market their wares to me but with this embedded site search I didn’t, I entered Flowers and clicked search, I was then exposed to three headline AdWords ads and the full right hand side for other sites selling flowers.

All those nice ads are being displayed when the user would most likely be on the Marks and Spencer site itself if the embedded site search option wasn’t there to use, so Google  are benefiting from brand traffic by showing ads, nice step for them, I can imagine there being millions of extra page views each month if this becomes a permanent feature.

If you look at AdWords listing number 3 you’ll see it’s Marks and Spencer flowers, I wonder how many people would click that listing, even if only 10% then Google has just monetised traffic that would have been free for M&S if the search box wasn’t there.

It’s a positive step for other advertisers as there will be more traffic looking for specific products, albeit on someone else’s site initially, but it’s at a cost to the site owner who’s had the embedded search button used on them, in lost traffic and sales on their organic brand and URL traffic.

I can’t say as I’m a fan of this new feature, AdWords is turning into a very brand sensitive arena and here are Google opening up sites brand and URL traffic so they can monetise it and others can benefit in traffic and sales whilst the inital brand searched can lose out.

I wouldn’t object if there were no AdWords and it was purely a site search service but due to Ads being shown on the results this isn’t a win-win situation for those “lucky” enough to get a listing with a site search box under it.