The trouble with paid search

In response to the Nov. 30 column by Charles Cooper, "Paid search? It stinks:"

I have been involved in the search and navigation business since 1995 and would say that most people don't distinguish between search and navigation.

I agree with you that from a research perspective, "pure" search is great, which is why Google has become so popular; whether they can do it for more and more data and data formats is another question. However, navigation is a completely different issue.

Direct navigation is when you actually know in advance what you are looking for and just want to go there quickly. To me, this distinction between search and navigation is all about "context," and here you will see categorical directory models emerge. Because search technology was not robust enough to deliver a good user experience, paid search became a stopgap to a true categorical directory model. GoTo.com and the other portals do paid listings because they have no real technology and because of short-term greed.

Instead of building technologies that address the navigation issue, these paid listing players have created a bad navigation experience for the user. Because people are forced to click on all their paid links, the paid listing providers have a continued incentive to deliver bad navigation. This is another problem. The user suffers and the portals still get paid.

Great story.

John Furrier
Palo Alto, Calif.