[bhouston]

It is a bit weird that "Harvard Business Review predicted that Amazon, Walgreens and other major internet retailers would soon follow eBay's lead and ditch AdWords. If you’re doing SEO, you get that prime SERP placement for free, right?"

And then shortly there after eBay dropped significantly in Google's rankings. To be honest, the above statement from HBR is a major threat to Google's business.

Coincidence?

[phpnode]

> Coincidence?

yes.

[bhouston]

eBay was likely one of the largest AdWord buyers. They seemed to have spamming landing pages in Google for a long time but were never penalized. They stopped being a huge AdWord buyer. Soon after they were penalized in Google's search engine rankings. Coincidence? When there is that much money involved, and a possible exodus of Wallgreens and Amazon away from Adwords, I am not completely buying it. Google would be stupid to allow that to occur.

[bryanlarsen]

When we make our product better, we are also frequently rewarded with increased revenue.

[matthewmacleod]

This. Can't be said enough. There's almost certainly not a concerted effort in Google to de-rank eBay, and you'd immediately hear it leak from one of the many people who would have to be involved if there were.

[bhouston]

It doesn't have to specifically target eBay to have the effect one wants. One just has to go after characteristics of spamminess that they didn't prioritize before. Like i said in another post, eBay has been spammy for a while, but it was not penalized.

eBay and Amazon are huge spenders on Adwords according to this infochart (which may or may not be reliable): http://i.i.cbsi.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2012/01/24/google-earnings...

[sudhirj]

Think this was one of those cases where doing what's right by user also happened to be a crafty business move. They might have had it coming a while and decided to time it right.