Have you ever typed in the address of a Google service and been surprised when that website didn’t exist?

Google uses a sub-domain for some of its products, (e.g. adwords.google.com, earth.google.com, mail.google.com) but uses a path name for others, (e.g. www.google.com/analytics, www.google.com/adsense).

This inconsistency causes confusion amongst Google users who may type in a URL containing the product name, but use the wrong format. The classic example of this is Adwords: Type in  www.google.com/adwords/ (with the trailing slash) and you may be astonished to discover:

So, this got us thinking here at First Rate, how many of Google’s products have both the path name and the sub-domain version set up, and how many of them have only one of them set up. And is there any rhyme or reason behind Google’s choice of a sub-domain or a pathname?

First Rate tested the pathname and sub-domain version for 50 of Google’s different services and products. The names tested were:

First Rate tested the following six URL formats:

• http://name.google.com/
• http://www.name.google.com/
• http://google.com/name/
• http://www.google.com/name/
• http://google.com/name
• http://www.google.com/name

The results confirmed First Rate’s suspicions: Many of Google’s products do not have the alternative URL set up:

• 64% of the products had both the sub-domain and path name versions set up (e.g. earth.google.com and www.google.com/earth or wave.google.com and www.google.com/wave).
• 14% had the path name set up but not the sub-domain (e.g. www.google.com/postini/ but not postini.google.com).
• 12% had the sub-domain set up but not the path name – some of the services had the path name set up for the version without a trailing slash, but not the version with the trailing slash.
• 10% had neither the path name nor the sub-domain version set up (e.g. android.google.com and www.google.com/android or insights.google.com and www.google.com/insights).
  Sometimes, this was because the product exists on its own domain, (e.g. www.android.com or www.orkut.com) and sometimes it was because the product in question has a longer URL than that tested, (e.g. insights is actually found at www.google.com/insights/search).

Further details

First of all, let’s ignore some of the tests – almost 100% of the tested URLs with no www. redirected to the www. version.

This is true both for URLs that exist at the redirected location (e.g. google.com/analytics redirects to www.google.com/analytics) and for the URLs that do not exist,(e.g. google.com/android redirects to www.google.com/android). Therefore, we haven’t considered the non www. versions of the URLs any further.

62% of the products did not have the www.subdomain.google.com version set up.

Perhaps we can let Google off the hook, as many websites with sub-domains setup fail to allow the www.subdomain version.

However, it is inconsistent and perhaps careless nonetheless, that half of the of the Google products that do have a subdomain have a www.subdomain version – and half don’t!

Finally, here are the full details for all the tests. (Note that the link checking software that we used failed to report on all the 302 redirects, it reported all of these as 200 ok – so the status code for the test may be incorrect.)

Product
admanager
adsense
adwords
affiliatenetwork
alerts
analytics
android
androidmarket
base
blogger
blogsearch
books
checkout
chrome
code
dirhp
docs
earth
feedburner
finance
friendconnect
grandcentral
groups
health
images
insights
labs
local
mail
maps
mobile
news
orkut
pack
picasa
postini
reader
scholar
sell
sites
sitesearch
sketchup
talk
translate
trends
video
voice
wave
websiteoptimizer
zeitgeist
Icons ref

Some other notable broken URLs include:

Blogsearch
www.google.com/blogsearch/ (with the trailing slash) – weirdly this one redirects to http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch/ which then doesn’t exist.

Feedburner
www.google.com/feedburner – you’d have thought that feedburner was a big enough product that there must be plenty of people who type in google.com/feedburner

Website Optimiser
websiteoptimizer.google.com is another important Google product with a path name but no sub-domain. First Rate loves this product, it is excellent for improving a client’s website conversion rate.

The Conclusion

Well, really the conclusion is obvious: Google as a “multi-armed hydra” has a variety of different business units and divisions, and perhaps this is the reason that there are no consistent website standards enforced?

And on top of that, Google don’t really need to care – because as a search company, Google knows that if someone fails to find a website they can always do a Google search to find it (and that’s why SEO is so important..!)

Sometimes, the search results for Google’s own products are less than good, e.g. they may lead to an older version of the page which has no obvious link to the newer version, or the phrase used may not match the product name and so the official page is pushed down the search results. Or sometimes even the link may be broken! – But that is a story for another blog post.

UPDATE: 10th September 2009

Matt Cutts has just pointed out to us that some of the inconsistencies are in fact intentional, on the basis of performance. Thanks Matt!

You are probably aware of the fact that Search Engine Optimisation is very effective at generating sales online, especially from new customers. Consider these statistics from a 2009 Forbes survey:

Granted, the survey is based on US data and carries a slant towards organisations with a large online marketing budget. (Email and e-newsletter in the above table is assumed to be in-house).

However, the tactics at the top of the list are the very tactics that First Rate has been successfully executing for the last 9 years on behalf of New Zealand and Australian organisations.

First Rate knows from first-hand experience that SEO, SEM and Email are as fundamental to a large organisation’s marketing strategy as they are to small and mid sized companies.

In fact, First Rate believes that Search is the most important online acquisition tactic because it can deliver outstanding business results. Is Search generating great results for your business right now?

Furthermore, did you realise that SEO is also an extremely valuable tactic for building your brand presence online?

First Rate calls this Performance Branding (growing brand awareness on a pay-for-performance basis). SEO provides millions of free search impression and thousands of clicks – what other channel can deliver these sorts of branding results?

Have you ever come across a TV or Radio network happy to provide you with free ad coverage? (Never mind actual visits to your website.)

TV and Radio advertising certainly has its allure, however, before more budgets are allocated to these channels, you should really re-evaluate your presence on the search engines. Are you currently maximising your budget..?

Here are some practical questions you should ask your marketing team:

1. How much are we paying per sale (or lead) from offline channels?
2. How much are we paying per sale (or lead) from online channels?
3. Do you know how many more sales (or leads) the website could generate?
4. How do we rank on generic keyword terms in the search engines compared to our competitors?
5. Are all our products indexed and ranking well in the search engines?
6. Are we happy with both the number of conversions and the cost per conversion derived from Search Engine Marketing?
7. What types of search ads generate the best results?
8. What types of landing pages generate the best results?
9. Are we continuously evaluating all aspects of our search marketing?
10. Have we explored search as a branding channel?

I find it amazing that NZ clients are still not getting the value that their overseas counterparts have come to expect as a standard.

In the US, online advertising is now 59% performance based and only 37% CPM based. In NZ, online advertising is only just into the CPM space and still has a legacy of “rental” advertising, supported by publishers who think of online as billboards and agencies that either lack sophistication or motivation. The end result is that the client ends up paying far more for their campaigns than they should and often on the least effective mediums.

Consider the recent statistics.

In the UK – the most “online” market – 20% of ALL marketing is now spent online, second only to television at about 23%. Of this online spend, 57% is spent on search marketing – a whopping 11.5% of total spend – GBP2 BILLION.  

Closer to home, even the Australians are enjoying a better deal, with online accounting for 13% of total spend and search topping 50% in the most recent quarter, almost 6.5% of total spend  - A$850m. Online has moved up to third behind press and TV, similar to other developed markets, such as the US.

NZ lags woefully behind, even using the most optimistic figures from the IAB, which are approximately 4 times larger than Nielsen’s, the total Online spend in NZ is 8.3% of the total budget, with search only accounting for 31% of this, an overall 2.6% of total spend at NZ$60m. Using Nielsen’s figures, Online accounts for only 2% of the marketing budget, meaning the search share is a pitiful 0.6%.

Search has consistently been proven to outperform other channels, so why is so little being spent on it in NZ?

Are we any less sophisticated consumers of the Internet? Unlikely. What accounts for this poor performance compared to our global peers?

Agency allocation of overall budgets?

Poor analysis and reporting on the effectiveness of different online channels?

Complexity of search?

No agency commission from search?

A bit of good old wool pulling?

There’s probably some truth in all of these areas.