TheMadScientist - 4:45 am on Dec 15, 2012 (gmt 0)

What I also see in our niche, is that the big time advertisers are also showing up much much higher in the natural SERPs.... even when searching for a very long hand written phrase that we have on our page and they do not.... coincidence? -Bewenched

But, it sounds like to me, you're still thinking search is 'keyword based' rather than, for lack of a better way of explaining, 'definition based', so if the competing site has a phrase that's 'algorithmically defined' to equate to the essentially the same thing as your phrase is about, then I'm not surprised at all, especially if you click on the page(s) from the competing site(s) to see if it/they contain the phrase more often than you click on your own site for the same query or type of queries ... That has nothing to do with Adwords spend and everything to do with the new algo we're dealing with. -TMS

Okay, the preceding from the zombie traffic thread [webmasterworld.com...] has made me wonder how many people really don't understand the new algo and are in some ways crushing (or at least suppressing) their own rankings by constantly clicking on the competition for the phrases they want to rank for?

I wasn't sure where to put it or start discussing it for sure without getting off topic, and I sort of think this thread is be the best place for it...