The Hits Just Keep on Coming: New Google Search Feature

Google rarely does anything without thinking about the ramifications, so it's interesting that the company has launched a search-within-search feature that could end up hurting print publishers.

Basically, when you search on Google for "NY Times," the search brings up the top pages and another box so you can search within the Times page without clicking through to the site. It certainly seems more convenient, but print publishers are unhappy because when you search for certain terms (jobs, real estate), ads pop up on the right for competitor sites. The ads, of course, only pop up for terms where there's real money to be made. If you search terms like sports and politics -- where there are plenty of competitors -- no ad words come up.

The one saving grace is for people to search logically. If people want jobs from the Washington Post, they are likely to search "Washington Post jobs" rather than breaking the process into two steps. When you do that, no ads words appear. It's a small but significant difference.