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December 17, 2006

Holiday Spirit, on Google Search Pages



Google shows candles and trees on the borderline between search results and ads for queries like "Christmas", "Hanukkah" (Jewish holiday that started on December 15 and ends on December 23 this year), "Kwanzaa" (a week-long holiday that honors African-American heritage - from December 26 to January 1 in the US).

{ Thank you, Oren K. }

8 comments:

  1. I can't seem to reproduce this.

    (I'm using the English version of Google on Opera.)

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  2. I could see this using a proxy service like hidemyass.

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  3. Does not work for me either from Norway either.

    But still cool! :)

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  4. Heh. That's ironic. I read in time magazine's article about Google in February where they watched engineers showing their ideas to Larry, Sergey and Eric. One idea was if someone searched for Christmas then instead of the light blue bar near the top it would be red and green. That idea was rejected. And now you see Christmas trees near the ads.
    I can see it in the US and in English for Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa.

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  5. Don't forget to explain Christmas a Christan holiday celebrated on December 25th

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  6. There are much more people that know about Christmas than those who know about Hanukkah or Kwanzaa (I didn't know anything about Kwanzaa).

    Here's a revealing chart from Google Trends.

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  7. According to Google Policy on Ads:

    We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads.

    However, Google itself is doing this, by lining up Christmas trees next to ads for Christmas!

    What a sham telling AdSense publishers not to do this, but doing this themsevles on the front page of Google!

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  8. I think its good! But I would still like to talk to REAL people that keep the Google web page up and running.

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