koan - 12:23 am on Nov 25, 2008 (gmt 0)

Commerce sites provide jobs for the masses and stimulate the economy.

My post may have not been very clear, I was thinking that content rich site usually are the best match for what people are searching for, hence their higher value and relevancy for search engines. An in-depth, critical article on widgets will always be more attractive than some list of widgets to buy.

As for Google or Yahoo! "responsability" to stimulate the economy and offer biased results in favor of ecommerce sites so people buy more, that's a strange rationalization for making them suddenly responsible for your financial success. Nobody owes you anything, that's the nature of the business world. Private companies are not the government. Search engines will offer SERPs that match people's expectations, their own survival depends on it, if a company wants more instant traffic to sell their goodies and don't have time or resources to write articles that will bring traffic in the long term, that's what Adword is for (which does its part to stimulate the economy by employing thousands of publishers, this is no different than a company offering thousands of normal jobs).

My personal take on that one, however, is that americans already are in debt for buying too many goodies. Recessions are natural part of an economy where people learn lessons about consumer excesses, buying what they can't afford and not saving diligently.