mihomes - 11:10 pm on May 1, 2012 (gmt 0)

I don't think Google considers itself to be primarily a shopping engine.

As they shouldn't... and this discussion has absolutely nothing to do with shopping... they are a search engine. Rather than this whole authority thing how about they focus on returning the best sites period... what a novel idea for a search engine haha. If the 'authority' has a horrible site then it does not deserve to rank high solely because they are the 'authority'... best sites overall among many many many factors should determine ranking.

If the authority has a horrible site...well, fix it and maybe things will change for them... until then I still believe the best overall sites should determine ranking. This would also stimulate growth and competition to create overall better sites (better user experience ding ding ding).

[edited by: mihomes at 11:14 pm (utc) on May 1, 2012]