Design of search engine services
Subtitle: channel interdependence in search engine results
By: Benjamin Edelman, Zhenyu Lai
Contributors: Lai, Zhenyu; Harvard Business School
Series: Working paper / Harvard Business School -- 13-087; Working paper (Harvard Business School) -- 13-087
Publisher: Harvard Business School
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Boston ]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 29
Work titles: Exclusive preferential placement as search diversion: evidence from flight search
Description: The authors examine prominent placement of search engines' own services and effects on users' choice of destinations. Using a natural experiment in which different results were shown to users who performed similar searches, they find that Google's prominent placement of its Flight Search service increased the clicks on paid advertising listings by more than half while decreasing the clicks on organic search listings by about the same quantity. User substitution disproportionately affected the most visited travel sites, reducing use of organic listings sending no-charge traffic to those sites by lowering their prominence and perceived importance, while highlighting paid listings to the same sites. The authors consider the implications of such changes for online marketers and for search engine operators.
Notes: Revision of Exclusive preferential placement as search diversion: evidence from flight search.

"April 2013. (Rev. October 17, 2014.)" -- Publisher's website.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 20-21).