Do we still love Google?

As the search engines become more greedy for dollars, there seems to be an inexorable rise in the number of 'products' being introduced which would seem to be trying to un-level the playing field for small businesses, home based businesses, mom and pop type enterprises etc. Not only that but adding dross to the results, and seemingly making it ever harder for searchers to actually find what they are looking for.


Google have now admitted that search results will be manipulated by staff in future. This seems to be dependent on what is the flavour of the month eg through the public opinion voiced on SearchWiki rather than any other particularly scientific criteria. Additionally, they have announced that the previously exclusiveAdsense for domains is now open to everyone, so that search results will now throw up inactive (and therefore empty) websites in order to generate revenue from the ads shown, and clicked upon.

Personally, I would have thought that cleaning all those domains which generate 404 errors, have not been updated since last century, and those that only have adverts on would have been more appropriate in attaining the raison d'etre behind Google's mantra about generating the relevant results for the most beneficial user experience.

If the results are to be manipulated by Google staff, then it would seem that it is going to get increasingly hard to get a listing by, for instance, providing quality content that is caught in organic searches. It may be that SEOs have to rely ever more on PPC to actually ensure that potential customers find their websites. This obviously financially benefits those who are providing PPC eg Google, Yahoo et al, and will surely undermine the trust in the supposed impartiality of the search engines in delivering the best results for the users.