Would love to hear some more opinions on this, google just seems very broken to me I don't believe one site should be able to dominate all the SERPS.
It does seem to be dictating what it thinks people want. It shows that Google are becoming more and more brand focused so PR is becoming a key tool in the SEO process. Unfortunately that also means that SEO as a process is going to become more and more expensive as brand building and advertising is a costly process. That means more people will chose to do PPC as it is cheaper and more effective, so I guess Google wins!
Agree Google does seem to be very focused on brands now which must be making it near impossible for new sites to rank well, unless they have a big marketing budget.
feel free to invite any other SEO's to this branch good to get a few people opinions.
Andy Mortimer added Dave Peiris.
Rather than a concerted push from Google to focus on brands, I think what they're most likely trying to do is determine when the query is for a specific site. If they have a high confidence that the query "Amazon games" is from someone wanting Amazon.co.uk, then why wouldn't they show relevant results from that specific site?
The problem here, of course, is that it looks like it sometimes incorrectly determines when a query is generic and when it's for a specific site - like the results right now for "mortgages leeds". I think when it goes right, it potentially improves the search results by a fraction, but when it goes wrong, the results become significantly worse, probably even unusable.
Wow that example for "mortgages leeds" is ridiculous no site should be allowed to dominating the top 30 results for such a generic term.
Andy Mortimer added Loïc Schülé and Tvallier.
It's getting more and more a theme to worry about what's going on with google ratings, even more now that they are getting big on owning content themselves... I think the right way to react on this is to make good standard compliant website and spend the rest of your budget on reaching your audience. Google is no holy grail no more and having other ways to reach your people is the sustainable key!
I think Google's practices are in place to increase usability, making google more accessible to the newest/least experienced users. After all, they are a business, and we are the product.
