Apparently, some of the search ads people see are from competitors.
While I didn't see those particular ads myself, I saw that there is a wide variety in the number of ads, depending on the search term, with up to 4 ads being displayed, essentially moving actual search results below the fold.
We can't just pay ourselves out of this problem without making other changes, as Google offers the specific version of the search engine we use only free with ads.
Update 2021: We can pay ourselves out of the problem, I just misunderstood Google's copy. oop.
We could either switch to Google's (paid) JSON search, use paid Algolia, or spin up our own search engine altogether.
ghost
commented
3 years ago
Apparently, some of the search ads people see are from competitors.
While I didn't see those particular ads myself, I saw that there is a wide variety in the number of ads, depending on the search term, with up to 4 ads being displayed, essentially moving actual search results below the fold.
We can't just pay ourselves out of this problem without making other changes, as Google offers the specific version of the search engine we use only free with ads.Update 2021: We can pay ourselves out of the problem, I just misunderstood Google's copy. oop.We could either switch to Google's (paid) JSON search, use paid Algolia, or spin up our own search engine altogether.
(via @chabowski, @pquairoli)