dertyfern - 8:47 am on May 16, 2010 (gmt 0)

That all may very well be TheMadScientist. I'm no expert in AI, load balancing, and all that hyper geeky stuff :)

But what I do know is that the moment I saw the new search interface popping in and out of my browser, traffic to lots of site I own/manage began tanking--many of which have outstanding quality links and good content.

My non-technical take is that between the new interface pushing organic down even further and the introduction of the left margin in search results, a portion of traffic that we'd all otherwise get is making use of ads, maps, and tools (to a larger degree).

Google's just slicing away another layer of organic traffic to monetize.