claaarky - 8:36 pm on Aug 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

Totally agree tedster. I just look at the sites on page 1 these days with the view that every site is there because people like them most (as opposed to google liking them most). It makes it much easier to understand what's happening and why people prefer those sites to mine!

I think Google is just constantly improving the user experience, split testing and monitoring their user stats (and ours) to see what goes down well with people. I'm now doing this and my revenue is going up. Giving people what they want (regardless of what I think that may be) is making me more money.

That's all google is doing in my view. It's just a matter of distinguishing the tests from the foundations. I think that by the time we notice a major change it has already been tested on users for a while and has been deemed a success with people so is being tested on a larger scale. Therefore i think by the time we all notice the same change, it's in the final stages of testing and is likely to become permanent on the basis that people like it more than what was there before.