Tips Tipped Over

Apparently, there was enough outcry over Google's self-promotional "tips" that they have removed them. When even Google's own Matt Cutts complains about them, I am not at all surprised to see the tips removed. They were actually removed last week, and I'm finally getting around to posting about it. Whether or not the tips were over the top and too intrusive or not, Google responded well. They received a fair amount of criticism for these tips, even while others like Danny felt that the complaints went too far. In this case, Google seems to have decided that it would be best to remove the tips. So, kudos to them for listening and responding so rapidly.

That being said, I'll still have to complain about two aspects. In my post, "Google Self-Promotion Over the Top?," I went on to add my own complaint about the toolbar promotion in IE as seen below. Since I was the only I (that I know of) who complained about that, it is still there.

The other example where the Google tips seemed especially egregious was with the search for blogs.ca that had the Blogger tip above the expected result. Now that the tip has been removed, guess what? We're back to just a regular, old banner ad. Few will complain about the ad. After all, it is the ad revenue which supports Google and lets us all search for free. I tend to tune out ads (as I tend to tune out Google's self promotion, except for the overly large toolbar promotion box), unless I'm searching for shopping. So is the ad more relevant than the Google self-promotional tip? I'm not sure. But since most of us are used to the ads, at least Google is less likely to get complaints. And just for comparison, Yahoo! has no ads for that search. Live has several, but only on the right side. Ask has three banner ads above the results.