Google the new eBay

[lissie]

This is an interesting development with google and product searchs http://www.seobook.com/10-blue-links-an ... ther-stuff I tried the suggested search here in Australia and I didn't see the paid ads on the right - but did get the shopping results/video results in the middle of the page.

[Brawnydt]

Shoot, well if your not in the top 5 now for some search terms... ur never gonna get seen...

[James]

I noticed that there are many shopping results for the keywords I am targeting. And I don't like the way Google does it, since it takes a great deal of traffic. It's not that they only place shopping results after 5th ranking position, I saw big ad blocks at the top.

I got to No3 position (2 days ago) for a keyword that got me 10-30 visitors a day from 7th place. But, that 3rd place didn't brought any improvement in traffic for these 2 days. Why? Because at the same time I jumped up, Google slapped Ad block full of images of the product I am targeting and it seems that everyone is clicking on them. Of course, there are many keywords out there, but this is not a good news for all of us who are looking for search traffic.

[Tel]

I'm noticing the same shit in more and more of my niches too and it is definitely absorbing some of the traffic.

WTF are Google playing at?

Isn't $5.4billion enough to make in a damn year?

As someone said, they will create a hole that another search engine will exploit. Maybe Bing might come up some when surfers get pissed off looking at all the ads on Google that weren't there before, just like the they did with Yahoo.

[Phillip]

yeah it is getting pretty much obvious that currently the goal os not to give the searcher the best possible results, but instead to get them to big e-stores. 'Never mind my informational ugly adsense sites.

[BenK]

This is very bad news if you are an affiliate marketer. Google is essentially becoming the top dog affiliate. I suppose if you create a product, you could see some benefit. If you target informational niches, not products, then you might not get those product pictures. But, we'll have to see where this goes.

[Phillip]

[James]

Yup, that's what I'm seeing for few of my keywords too. That big ad block is really hammering my traffic. Good pics with price tag on them...what else will the visitor click on...

[Brawnydt]

It's no mistake they rolled this out just before Christmas too.

[Phillip]

This might be the biggest reason why my hubpages adsense income is down - seriously. We should start a petition: "Google is getting too commercial, turn down the ads or we will switch to Bing". If we could get a few million people to sign then maybe it could make a difference:D