I agree that nothing has been proven by imagolfer -
What does appear to be happening, is that he just wants to get listed under some very competitive terms. Unfortunately for imagolfer, not all sites that have the words 'golf' AND 'course' AND 'east' AND 'texas' are competing with him, nor do they happen to all be an actual golf courses, but they have worked harder to be listed for those terms than imgolfer seems to have, else he would be there, I have no doubt.
Here's another thought - (just speculation) -
Google doesnt like to show duplicate results on the same page, they figure since you are paying for clicks, that adwords ad must be valuable to you, and your free lisitng and your paid listing on the same page is a duplicate in their eyes, and it would be silly of them to remove the paid listing....see my point?
If this were true, I still dont see it as unfair manipulation against the little guy, just offering a better variety of results.
In the end - this is simply a case of a narrow minded site owner who think HIS site is the only/most relevant site, and he fails to open his eyes and see all the other uses that a string of words might have to the billions of other people out there. Here's a good way to check if you are making a fuss for no good reason
got to
https://signup.overture.com/s/dtc/si...gestions.jhtml
and put in your search string "golf course east texas"
From the horse's mouth, I quote:
"What do the statistics on the Search Term Suggestion results show?
Search Volume
This is the number of searches the term received across the Overture network in the last month. This data is updated at the end of each month and is usually available by the 10th of the next month. "
Your search string shows 210 searches this month.
Although there are a billion more popular searches, that is by no means small change, considering that 10 times as many of the exact same search is happening on Google alone this month, not to mention MSN and other SEs... so it is a good string to optimize for is my point, but it also means you have competition.
I have a good sized group of competitors (30) - but in many ways that is small I know! - I cant get in the top ten for all my keywords/strings but it doesnt make me think Google is out to get me- and my SERs on Yahoo, MSN and Google are vastly different. Occassionally other sites that happen to have my keywords on them, but arent truly relevent IMO, get into the top ten results. I make point to notify the SE of poor results in those cases. And yes, I compete with those big directories too, and I try to get listed in them also - which builds my
PR some. I have tried Adwords and decided it doesnt benefit me enough over my free listings. I work to optimize my site, but not TOO much, every day. I use WebPositionGold to monitor my ranks and I watch them change **every** day (thats an eye opener!) Up and Down and Up and Down, whoopee! its because everyone is tweaking, and changing and growing, and adding new content and new sites join the web, old ones die, etc. This is all the nature of caring about a web site. Its fun, dont take it so seriously!
I agree with the poster who said "Gooogle doesnt have time to care about the little guy"
My dad always told me: If you can't change something it doesnt do any good to worry about it. Believe me, you can't change Google. Just do the best you can to get ranked well, thats all you can do.