europeforvisitors - 1:45 am on Nov 10, 2002 (gmt 0)

Martinibuster wrote:

But let's not kid ourselves about "information sites" being different from ecommerce sites. Info sites generally are not soap boxes, but a way for someone to turn knowledge into coin.

PC Magazine is a way to turn knowledge into coin, too, but that doesn't mean it's instinguishable from a catalog for Dell, CDW, or PC Mall. And I wouldn't expect to see those catalogs indexed by a reference resource.

rfdgxml wrote:

The only way to determine if a page is commercial or not is human review. That'd be a LOT of manpower Google would need to do it.

Well, an ODP or Yahoo listing might help, depending on where (and whether) the page was listed. And other factors, such as whether the page had a shopping cart, might come into play. But I don't think this thread is about technical challenges and what is or isn't possible. For the sake of discussion, let's assume that Google will be able to make such distinctions.

Also, who says Google has to make a clearcut distinction? It could achieve nearly the same effect as banishing commercial sites just by depreciating the value of pages with shopping-cart links, fields for sales tax and shipping charges, a certain ratio of affiliate links to text, certain phrases ("generic Viagra," "Book now"), etc. Such pages wouldn't be penalized per se; they simply wouldn't rank as high in an information search as they rank with the current algorithm. Because of this, owners of e-commerce and affiliate sites would be motivated to buy AdWords or use the bid-for-placement "shopping portal" that born2drv predicted in message #3 of this thread.

Food for thought: In the offline world, businesses expect to pay for access to potential buyers--whether those prospects are TV viewers, radio listeners, newspaper and magazine readers, or people on mailing lists. Is it realistic to think that Google will always continue to deliver potential buyers to businesses for free?