>Do you really believe that you would be involved, or even have access to, the business process that weights the effect of algorithmic changes to Ad CTRs? And then approving or disproving those changes based on those factors?
> I've been making changes to search for 7 years. There are many metrics that I have to collect to justify a change. None of them involve ads.
I believe you.
What I don't believe is that the higher-ups don't track their own most important metrics.
Google is a company that gets 95% (or somewhere around that range) of its revenue from things that revolve around Ad clicks.
What some are suggesting here violates the laws of nature...
That changes made to search-results relevancy (a user getting back exactly what he/she is looking for) either does not impact Ad Click-through and Ad Impression rates, or is just not important [enough to affect the desision if those changes get made or not].
*I'm assuming that users going into the sponsored results (Ad) area has something to do with them not getting what they are looking for in the organic results area.
They track that number very carefully, but they don't track it for each change to ranking and the people who track that aren't the people who are making launch decisions for ranking.
> I'm assuming that users going into the sponsored results (Ad) area has something to do with them not getting what they are looking for in the organic results area.
I was thinking about this some more -
There is a further assumption in the above... That the users who click ads can distinguish between organic and sponsored results (or even if they care to).
Then, I remembered some time ago another study was done were it showed that the majority of ad clickers were the same 10% of the user base (give or take a few %). Or at least the same type of person (uninformed, bored, delusional, etc).
This of course would mean that changes to relevant search results will have no impact on the majority of Ad clicks. They'll click anyways.
Yes, I regularly watch the decisions get made. You can see an example launch meeting here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRJXnXgE-A
I've been making changes to search for 7 years. There are many metrics that I have to collect to justify a change. None of them involve ads.