Google's Network Effects

615 Words3 Pages
What is the nature of network effects in paid search markets? Do you expect Google to sustain its present domination in this market? Paid search markets consist of two sides; the advertiser and the consumer also known as the money and the subsidy sides. A company looking to advertise its products and services pays search engines to display their ads to consumers who are searching for certain key words that are relevant to the product or service the advertiser is selling. When a user searches for a certain product the search engine will return both sponsored and non- sponsored results. The difference is that the sponsored results are usually at the top of the list or in some highly visible area of the page to increase the chances of the consumer seeing the ad and clicking on it. Search engines connect this two sided market and profit from the network effects generated by the users and the advertisers. In other words if a search engine manages to attract a large number of users via subsidies this will entice a large number of companies to advertise through the search engine because ultimately advertisers wish to reach the largest number of potential customers at the lowest price. An increase in Y results in an increases X i.e. when users increase advertisers also increase  cross side network effect. Also when X increases Y increases i.e. when the number of companies advertising on a search engine increases so will the number of users because they will be able to find more of the relevant information they seek  cross side network effects. Search engines understand that to increase their user base, enhance the networks effects they must first improve the relevance and accuracy of their search results which is the first step in attracting more users. Search engines use complex algorithms to improve accuracy and consequently click-through-rates i.e. when users finds
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