Google going Pay Per Click?

[ptory]

I, like many others, have made a living as a one-man business, and been grateful to Google for a position in the top 10 or 20 for a couple of years.

1. Now that I am not in the top 500, I have done a bit of research and experimenting, and it seems that the commercial sites have been clobbered, whilst those with an oblique (or in some cases, non-existent) connection with the search words are getting a good ranking.

2. Are we still in the lists at all? Add "+a" to your search words, as in "furniture maker +a" and all the old positions are as they were.

3. Google will fast lose popularity if they carry on like this; people searching for something cannot find it.

4. Could it be that our friends at Google are preparing to force the commercial sites into a pay-per-click scenario if they want to be listed, while leaving the non-commercials as they were? Or am I being cynical?

[Steven Glover]

I dont think that was the intention behind the changes that occured to cause a number of people to lose rankings.

The attempt was to better the relevence of the results and in some cases it has. In many cases I am not so certain. I am however certain that tweaking is continually going on to improve relevence and in so doing if your sites are relevent for the keyword you are hoping to rank well in you will find that your site will start on an upward progression again.

Google doesnt always know best but They are probably one of the most adaptive bunch of people to run a business. They actually hold programming contests once a year where many of their new concepts come from. They really can say that they strive for community participation and mean it, unlike other directories that make that claim.

[simonm]

On our beloved BBC (I'm British) last night there was an extensive coverage of the dot com boom and bust in "Dot Coms Bounce Back " which included interviews with Google, both Sergei Brin and Google staff. They shared both an emphasis on the promotion and use of adwords along with pushing Google as a knowledge machine that might become part of everyday life as a sort of brain companion!

Not really much more than we know but the emphasis on pay per click, promoting the methodology in a public and non technical forum that had the advertsier only pay for interested contacts was certainly of interest.