More eBay, Amazon, Dealtime, Epinions, etc. in Results

Side Effects of Improved Dynamic Spidering?

[Slud]

For a lot of the words I track, I've noticed a marked increase in the number of meta shopping sites: eBay, Amazon, Dealtime, Epinions, CNET Shopper, Buy.com and even Google Answers in the results.

Is this a side-effect of improved dynamic spidering, or have the web developers for the sites wised-up (en masse)?

Random forum posts and PDF's sometimes show up in the top 10 for words that are pricey at overture ($5+).

My hope is that this is just a temporary situation before the full update occurs.

[vdlddd8379]

I don't think there's a Google conspiracy but I agree with others on this thread that having three pages of Amazon and epionins results is not what searchers want or expect from Google. Most people who are web-saavy enough to go to Google in the first place are certainly saavy enough to check out Amazon if they were so inclined. They go to Google because they are looking for a variety of other sources of information or product resources. For the search terms I follow, Amazon is completely dominating the first three pages with nary a competitor in site. About a third of the Amazon results are not even in English. The results are just franky crappy (whether I am bitter about not being ranked highly or not).

[Olaf Bloemberg]

Hmmm... recently confronted with some "widget -kelkoo" queries in my Google referrers. Worrying indeed, as far as the SERPS concern.

[c1bernaught]

It never ceases to amaze me how some people can completely miss something that is so abundantly obvious and clear to the vast majority of people posting to this 19 page forum topic.

I believe that there are several examples of people posting here that have heard complaints from end users. In fact I myself related that the very high tech people I work with on a daily basis no longer consider google to be the best search tool.

The many, many posts here citing example after example of the current problem speak for themselves.

[GoogleGuy]

"GG just checking back in with you to see if you have an answer one way or the other on the pdf/docs."

lk125, thanks for asking. I was talking to another engineer and we came up with a much better way of testing both the pdf and commercial/vendor pages issue. It will take a little while (a few days), but give us much better abilities to see how things stand. We're going to take whatever actions need to happen to make sure that our search is where we want it to be. So the update is that I don't have an answer right now, but I'm escalating this internally and we're investigating more.