walkman - 3:55 pm on Sep 16, 2011 (gmt 0)

Idk, aesthetically I prefer the new changes. I think it makes the page look cleaner and less cluttered.

Real estate is precious there. I think everyone will agree that it has nothing to do with looks but with the head /eye position of the average user and ads. Make no mistake, this has been tested to death and it "enhances the user experience." They are called heat maps [bing.com...]

And maybe the average user prefers ads over the organic results. Maybe they feel they can trust those results more than our "spammy" organic results. At least the ads have Google's stamp of approval, a trusted authority.

I agree and I feel that this is the search team's goal for e-commerce searches, or where the money is. Job well done too.

I sometimes wonder if Google will eventually charge all sites to be included in it's index. How many of you would pay to have a shot in the world's highest quality and farthest-reaching search index as opposed to being left out?

Pay to play? Google is doing it indirectly and people are noticing it. Then, they are legal issues. Not to mention trust. Google would lose market share even faster if people knew what's really going on, let alone making it officially pay-to-play

[edited by: walkman at 3:58 pm (utc) on Sep 16, 2011]