Does Google favor commerce over information?

A disturbing and frustrating trend I have noticed

[jtara]

I have been finding it more and more difficult lately to find sites that give me information, rather than trying to sell me something.

I will do a search, and the top results are a mix of stores, manufacturers, and useless MFA sites. Sure, some of the store and manufacturer sites have some good, informative information - but, of course, through the lens of a store or manufacturer.

It's particularly annoying when my search is NOT going to ultimately lead to buying anything. I may just be curious about how widgets work, for example.

I have an idea of how Google (or others) could solve this problem. (But, do they WANT to solve it?) I'd like to see them attach non-mutually-exclusive "attributes" to websites and possibly also to web pages.

Attributes might include:

- store
- hobbyist/enthusiast site
- review site
- manufacturer
- industry council
- online presence of a print newspaper
- non-profit organization
- blog
- forum
- wiki

etc. etc. etc.

A mechanism could be provided to use attributes in both the negaative and positive in a search.

I was discussing this with a friend the other day, and he pointed-out that Google is already doing something similar, with their narrowed searchs, such as academic search, blog search, etc. The problem with this is that they don't cover the breadth of attributes I envisage, can't be combined in the same search, and can't be used in the negative.

Back to the original topic (I will post the "attribute" idea separately to the general "search" forum for discussion), do you feel that Google is intentionally steering people to commerce sites, are they wearing blinders, is this an inherent limitation of current technology, or has Google lost the war with SEO?

[gibbergibber]

I don't think it's Google doing this, but there seems to be a general problem with the internet that it's very difficult to make money from writing content, and easier to make advertising money as a gateway to a wide range of content or by running a site where a wide range of other people write your content for you.

If you spend a long time creating good content it tends to appeal to a narrow audience that is unwilling to pay for it, and the content usually ends up being appropriated by various other sites without your knowledge anyway.

The good guys who do all the work usually don't have any financial reward mechanism in place, whereas "gateway" sites or sites where the majority of contributors are volunteers seem to get by on advertising.

[phantombookman]

With respect I disagree completely.
My guess is the sites you see are simply stronger.

I have 2 sites that operate in exactly the same space.
One sells collectable widgets and one is a non-commercial resource information site about the same collectable widgets.

Countless short tail search terms are therefore identical offering a direct comparison.
The resource site beats the commercial one very time.

More and better quality links - it still basically all boils down to that

[europeforvisitors]

do you feel that Google is intentionally steering people to commerce sites, are they wearing blinders, is this an inherent limitation of current technology, or has Google lost the war with SEO?

No, I don't. If anything, I've noticed a trend in the opposite direction, which is impressive when you consider the sheer volume of heavily-SEOed commercial sites that are competing for high rankings in Google's SERPs.