Microsoft Patent to Penalize Paid Search Advertisers?
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 28, 2007 | Share This
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Today Microsoft was granted a Patent for “Systems and methods for removing duplicate search engine results.” Bill Slawski on Search Engine Land reports,
“The patent, Systems and methods for removing duplicate search engine results, explores filtering organic results when there’s more than one URL pointing to the same page (i.e., http://www.example.com, http://www.example.com/home.html) on a search results page. It adds the possibility of removing a Web search listing from a search results page when there’s also a paid listing pointing to the same page.”
It’s fairly well known that having both a paid and search presence on the search engine results page can triple a listings potential clickthroughs. It seems bizarre that Microsoft would even consider such a filtering system, since it would destroy Microsoft’s paid search business. Then again, as Slawski notes, “not every patent that is granted gets implemented.”
Read the full story on Slawski’s blog, SEO by the SEA.
Topics: Advertising: Online, Microsoft, SEM: Paid Search, Search: Innovations |