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Google to Increase Self Promotion in First Quarter 2007.

original article from Wall Street Journal with comments from Peak Positions.

Google Inc. may finally have learned how to promote itself without compromising its core keyword search principles. Like its own legions of online advertisers, Google plans on increasing marketing of its many new products throughout the homepage of Google.com in early 2007.

The Mountain View, Calif., company shook up the advertising world -- and made a very good living -- by selling subtle text Pay Per Click advertisements designed to give advertisers leads without compromising organic and natural keyword search results.

Unlike floundering search rivals such as Yahoo Inc. and IAC/InteractiveCorp.'s Ask.com unit, Google does not use blatant banner ads or buy network television spots seeking to increase brand awareness and site traffic. Google has maintained a famously simple homepage, displaying a simple set of links to search services, including keyword search results for the Web, images, video, news and maps.

The minimalist marketing strategy has provoked some whistles of disapproval from investors (typical ... many on the street still fail to understand after nearly 7 years the market share power and user loyalty gains made by serving relevant keyword search results to searchers worldwide) and some industry watchers are concerned that many of Google's newer products -- Finance, Real Estate, Answers -- have been floundering because people don't know enought about them. The street has one primary concern that is to aid Google in maintaining its torrid growth rate and nothing else.

Yet, slowly but surely, Google has been finding its own true-to-character techniques for pitching its expanding array of wares. Recently, it appears to be using its own immensely popular search site to invite users to try another product, typically in a way that is couched more as a helpful hint than a salesman's pitch.

"They're starting to promote many of their other products" that were created or acquired during the last couple of years, says LeeAnn Prescott, an analyst at Hitwise.

The slow change underscores the tension between Google's simpler past as a search engine -- epitomized by the clean homepage that won over millions of users -- and its more complicated, portal-like future. The crisp look can't be shed without peril, but a menu of services requires a little clutter.

"Nobody's going to find these new tools unless they do something to promote them," Ms. Prescott says.

Recently, Google has run sizable promotions for its browser-toolbar download in a box at the top right corner of its homepage. It has also recently encouraged homepage visitors to download the latest version of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation's Firefox Web browser, a growing rival to Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer browser that uses Google as its default search engine.

Google has long promoted the toolbar, and other products, on its homepage. But the recent plugs have been closer in style to banner ads -- being at the top and employing graphics -- than the low-key one-liners under the search box that Google has used before. Heralding the new year, for instance, Google last week ran a tongue in cheek, self promoting plug that said, "Get disorganized in 2007. Use Google Desktop to find your files."

Both the toolbar and the relationship with Firefox aid Google's search-query market share because they make using Google more convenient -- no visit to Google.com is necessary -- and can cement user loyalty.

More pitches of this sort can be expected, but Google may be unwilling to use the power of its sleek homepage much more aggressively.

"We are committed to the clean, uncluttered user interface of the Google homepage. From time to time we promote products on the Google homepage in order to help people continue to find and access information that's important to them," a Google spokeswoman said.

This assurance from Google to keep the homepage design clean is definitely Great news to keyword searchers. Google's simple homepage interface of Google.com and their deep search databases is exactly what has made Google the dominant search player and an internet icon throughout the world.

Google understands that internet users want to search by keyword and Google has not attempted to become all things to all users like: Yahoo, MSN, Ask and other non-committed search comptetitors, that are profit-driven, advertisising focused, and quite often deliver cluttered search results pages that are hard to use and many times too bulky.

Google declines to say how effective these product plugs on the google.com homepage have been to date, but did day that Google constantly makes "adjustments" to Google.com pages to help users find information and to test new designs and user interfaces.

But it appears that even small changes on the google.com can have a big impact. No doubt, with billions of users using the google.com homepage daily it only makes logical sense that even subtle design changes to the Internet's most popular homepage will create huge impacts on traffic flow.

According to research from Hitwise, traffic to Google's Blog Search service more than doubled over a two-week period in October after Google put a simple link to the service on its Google News homepage. About 60% of its blog search traffic has come directly from Google News since then, compared with 1% before the change, Hitwise says.

"What they're doing is very subtle," Ms. Prescott says. And it's "effective, clearly, but it's almost like they do it kind of late," pointing out that Google Blog Search was sitting around for a long time before the company began to push it.

Hitwise has tracked how Google's past in-house promotions have led to surges in use of its services. It noted a jump last winter for Book Search, to the fifth-most-used Google service from the ninth, after Google ran a simple message at the bottom of some search-results pages reading: "Try your search again on Google Book Search."

Google has been more liberal lately in its use of the search-results pages as a marketing tool, and in a number of different ways.

Indeed, Google's own search-results pages could be the company's best marketing tool.

"The most effective way to promote a new product is just by showing it to [users] when it's relevant to what they're looking for," said Google Vice President Marissa Mayer in April.

"In terms of driving traffic ... that technique actually yields the most users," compared with links on the homepage or other types of marketing, she said, adding that it is "the best way for us to build up a meaningful awareness of the product."

Look for many, new subtle changes to the google.com homepage design as the powerful wall street investment crowd with little understanding of the internet continues to try and persuade the Google management team to focus more on monetizing keyword search results and sacrifice Google's core mission and commitment to date of delivering relevant results to keyword searchers worldwide.