drall - 6:48 pm on Jun 8, 2010 (gmt 0)

I dont think this will be the fall of Google by any means. Im sure they tested it 6 ways from Sunday and they liked what they saw. But for me and my websites (and they are my websites, not Googles) I have drawn the line in the sand.

We see the sites that have replaced us, we see how they are gaining. I wont do that to my users or my websites. Google accounts for a small portion of our overall visits.

Many of the sites that have replaced us make visitors jump through hoops to get what they want. Maybe our site being a clean and well presented experience leads to less page views or visit length because we give the user exactly what they are looking for and that is playing against in some unintended way right now?

Who knows.

Will this be the end of Google? Not a chance, I would imagine this only hurt a very small set of publishers and as Tedster pointed out the feedback systems will correct obvious errors over time.

Who knows.

All I know is what is. And what I know is that 10 years of playing by the rules just got burnt up overnight in this new and improved version of Google. I know spammy junk filled sites have replaced us. And I know NONE of it makes any sense to me. So to me at least the simple answer for us is that Google is broken. Will it fix itself someday for us?

Who knows.