The 110 Million Dollar Button

Reservoir Hill writes "The 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button on Google's search page may cost the company up to $110 million in lost ad revenue every year according to a report on American Public Media's Marketplace. Tom Chavez says that since the company makes money selling ads on its search results page, the 1% of users who use the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button never see Google's ads - the button automatically directs them to their first search result. So why does Google keep the button? Marisa Mayer, Google's vice president responsible for everything on the search page, says that 'it's possible just to become too dry, too corporate, too much about making money' and the 'I'm Feeling Lucky,' button reminds you that 'people here have personality.' Web usability expert Jacob Nielsen says the whimsy serves another business purpose: 'Oh we're just two kind of grad students hanging out and having a beer and having a grand old time,' not you know, 'We are 16,000 people working on undermining your privacy.'"

Small change

[Finallyjoined!!!]

Has anyone here ever used the "I'm feeling lucky" button. I think I did once in 1999. Usually it's the second or third result that's the most relevant.

Or....

[niceone]

They know that the first result is pretty unlikely to be what you want, so you'll have to come back and do a real search anyway...

That's silly.

[JackHoffman]

Have they accounted for the image benefit of the "I'm feeling lucky" button? Would Google have as many users for normal searches if that button were not there? Accounting will make everything look bad if you tell them to.

Doesn't really cost them that much.

[WibbleOnMars]

Nah, it doesn't cost them anything like that. That's probably what it would cost if every one of those "feeling lucky" people had instead clicked on an ad, but let's be honest here, that would never have happened.

Those people who use it are
(a) people who already know that the result they want is the first one and wouldn't click anything else anyway.
(b) people doing silly google-hacks, like "miserable failure", or whatever.
(c) people who will come back any use google's regular search anyway for more results once they've seen the "lucky" one.

For all these people, using the "feeling lucky" button isn't stopping them clicking on any ads, because they wouldn't click them anyway. In fact, it is actually likely to be adding to their brand awareness of google, and thus making them more likely to come back to google for other searches where they might click on ads.

So yes, it might lose them a *few* ad clicks on the *actual* search involved, but long term, those people will be back and will click on other ads. Google isn't losing anything from this.

It's branding.

[slim]

The phrase "I'm feeling lucky" is part of the Google brand, as has been since their search engine was incepted.

Notice the phrase is also prominent (and useful!) in Picasa.

The point is, losing it would be a big change to the brand, like making Coke cans with no red on them.

People use it?! I'm shocked!

[urcreepyneighbor]

Maybe it's because I'm a control freak or because I'm a pessimist or something else, but I've never used the Lucky Button. I'd love to see a psychological profile of the people who use the Lucky Button regularly.

Someone, quick, call Jakob Nielsen! We need an exhaustive study!

usa-what?

[sulfur_lad]

Ahhh Jakob, lol. Web usability evangelist is more like it. "I'm feeling lucky" (as some have mentioned) is sometimes actually a pretty nice shortcut, it's also a fun way to spend an evening. I never would have discovered there was a band called "Johnny Uterus and the Philopean Tubes" without it.

How long

[hcdejong]

until moneygrubbing investors pressure Google into ditching the button?

The 'maximize profit at the expense of everything including customer experience' really gets to me sometimes.

Re:Small change

[purpledinoz]

I seriously doubt that Google is loosing $110M just because of that button. In fact, it's probably losing more money in bandwidth costs for the HTML code to put that button there. That button is like playing the slot machine. Every once in a while you get lucky, and find exactly what you want, but most often you just hit the back button and feel stupid for pressing that button in the first place.