Written by Grant Crowell
July 31, 2007
Is Google Competing for Your Clients?
Greetings fellow LED-heads. Its been a few years since I last posted here, and now that I've returned along with a regular gig at Search Engine Watch covering the video search space, I thought it would be appropriate to share this cross-over subject:
I recently lost out on a bid to handle a current client's video production and search marketing campaign. The company who won the bid? Google.
Google is actually one of the companies who sits on my client's
National Advisory Board, so it was no surprise to me that they were in
the running for this project. What did surprise me, however, is when my
client contact informed me that Google had not only given them a
proposal to handle all of the video search production and advertising
work (through their own Google Adwords program, of course), but that
they would do all of the organic video optimization work as well.
My concern is if this precludes a conflict of interest, when the
largest search engine that owns both the most trafficked overall and
short-format video search space (YouTube), along with the most
trafficked long-format search space (Google Video), offers its
advertising clients organic optimization services for its own search
spaces. I remember the raised eyebrows from search marketers when
Google has acquired media agencies which themselves include an SEM
branch or subsidiary company. Provided that what my client communicated
to me is accurate, does Google's action have the potential to seriously
compromise the neutrality of its own video search results?
I would be interested to know if anyone else has had a similar
experience with Google or any other search space in competing for
client business. This is still a relatively new marketing medium, and
most deserving of its own checks and balances.
Grant Crowell
Grantastic Designs
 this post appeared in
LED Digest 2460
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