Lessons from Google’s Landing Page
Filed under: PPC on Friday, March 14th, 2008 by Jacob Wolfsheimer
I read recently that Google’s homepage is the greatest landing page ever developed. With a market cap of nearly $139 billion, is it in fact true that google.com is the best landing page on the internet?
The goal of Google’s home page is to receive a search, any search. This does not seem to be a difficult task. The homepage does not describe how to search or what to search for. It barely says “search” at all - only on the “Google Search” button or the “Advanced Search” link.
There are other options and services to explore. But, the “landing page” says very little about who Google is, what they do, and how to interact with them.
A landing page as simplistic as Google’s for a client wishing to capture email addresses would have more difficulty capturing those email addresses with a simple box and submit button that says, “Submit Email” - than by utilizing a more full-featured landing page.
And Google’s homepage would not survive their own quality score requirements for PPC landing pages - even for a search query as basic as “search.” There simply is not enough text and information on the Google homepage to offer valuable results for users.
Perhaps, the “landing page” that we should actually be evaluating is the search results page. Besides, many users do not travel to google.com prior to doing a search. My browser has a search box that automatically goes directly to the search results page for the search queries I request.
Is the goal of Google to search or is to receive advertising dollars from people clicking on ads displayed? If google.com is the landing page for receiving advertising dollars, I would expect to see ads more along the lines of perhaps, aol.com.
The lessons of Google’s landing page, whether it is their homepage or their search results page, is TEST! Google is constantly testing, especially their search results page.
Test your landing pages for different elements, test them for ad copy, order of copy, different calls to action, and beat your own benchmarks. There may be value in studying other landing pages, but what Google or some other company does on their site may not translate for your visitors.
