I have been watching the Google OneBox and there was an article about it in today’s Search Engine Watch. I’d give a direct link but it’s a paid subscription service (and well worth it).
The OneBox is the space above the first entry of organic results (results on the left side of the screen). A couple of months ago I started noticing paid ads show up there and now they are putting maps, movie times, and book recommendations up there. My gut tells me we’ll probably see video up there very soon too.
One weird thing – it only appears to show up the first time, if you refresh a page you are on it’s gone.
In other big news I got notice that SalesForce.com is getting scheduled maintenence around Jan. 15 to get the first ’07 upgrade. This will have integrated Google paid search, but you can get that already if you dig for it.
Shoutouts to Christopher Penn for his ninja search info and Bryan Person for helping me get the feeds straight.
One reply on “What is The Google OneBox”
[…] The down side is if you’ve been doing this shotgun style your minimum bids will rise fast (I’ve seen keywords go from 50 cents to $10 in a week), and you will have a hard time getting a good position on the page. On the other hand, if you work hard at creating relative content you will bid and pay less than those whose ads aren’t as good, and if you do well enough you can make it over to the one box where you will perform better than on the right side. […]