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.
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.
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.
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.
