Search terms that include a brand name are now completely dominated by the brand name owner's pages, even though many of these (in the products I handle, at least) are scarcely relevant to the query. Affiliate sites, even those containing masses of good, relevant content can hope for no better than 5th place. I'm now hearing more and more complaints from people whose Adsense accounts have been closed because G sees them as containing bridge pages which exist just to send the visitor to another site; in other words they are affiliates.
Now on the face of it this is perverse logic; most of the Adsense ads in my sectors are placed by affiliates and banning all of these will reduce Google's income to an enormous degree so why are they doing this? Is this the biggest corporate suicide this century - or is there another reason?
Google, with their purchase of boutiques.com is now, itself, an affiliate. Perhaps they intend to drive the rest of us out of business, and replace us? Surely not, they 'do no evil'.
