[mikeatl]

recommend reading this article to get the backstory for him writing this article: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/googles-highly-profitable... .

I agree that he goes a bit sideways in the post. However it prompted me to start paying more attention to the results I was seeing in various Google searches and I was sincerely shocked by how little "real" organic results were being returned for many searches. The top of the results page are now taken up by 3 ads, many of which now feature rich snippets and the +1 button (which make them take up more screen real estate then before). The Rich Snippets that I saw were largely review stars that would show up for product specific searches. However the ratings/links were not for the products searched for.

After that you would either see a large Google Products Display or 1-2 organic results, followed by an even bigger Google Products Display.

I'm not a SEO so have no stake in their industry's success of failure. What bothers me is the level of hipocracy in them doing this. Since Panda was introduced earlier this year their search algo penalize sites for doing this, supposedly because the practice creates a poor user experience. They have basically cut out small businesses using this rationale and replaced them with an even more deceptive form of the same thing. Look at their earnings for the past year - that's what really caught my attention.