I've been thinking about why Google is suddenly so concerned about the quality of their advertisers' landing pages. If you think about it the way it fits in their current business model, it really doesn't make any sense. They are turning away business by raising the bids to a point where it's impossible for their advertisers to make money through conversions. I think they're changing their business model...and I think they are going to move toward less organic results and more advertising results. In other words, getting rid of the organic results eventually. This may seem crazy at first, but really think about it. Their algorithm worked great a few years ago, but now it's becoming increasingly difficult for them to stay on top of all the holes people are finding in it. A whole industry (SEO) has emerged trying to get sites to the top of the SERPS. The basis of their original algorithm (links are votes) no longer holds up because people are cheating. Just as an election wouldn't work if people could vote as many times as they wanted, their system is no longer working because of all the link spam and link exchanges that are really false votes. The worst part is, no matter what algorithm they come up with, people will try to game it. Just look what happens everytime they do an update...this place gets crazy with theories on what they did and how to work the slightly changed system. Changing over to an advertiser-only based model, where they review all the landing pages, fixes all these problems. I know it basically turns them into a paid directory, but I think they might have 1 or 2 tricks up their sleeve to make it work. What do you think?
Nope, here's why I think they did it: They had to make it look like they were doing everything they could to stop the MFA sites that are ruining their search engine. But, as I've stated before, Google probably makes a considerable percentage of their entire gross revenue from those very same MFA sites (who are surely their top earners - by far) - so they had to do something that would BOTH make it look like they were getting rid of MFA sites AND not hurt their revenues (ie. allow the MFA's to stay - but take all thier profits away and use them to line your own pockets). I think this new landing page thing does both quite well....
they are the number one search engine at the moment why would they turn away all the people who cant pay to be listed, do you think they would just hand over there number one spot for the most used search engine just like that.
The reason they are the number one search engine is because they have the reputation of delivering the best results If they convince people that by changing over to a paid model they will deliver even better results, then they'll still be #1.