3 Adwords plus 7 Google Places - diverts traffic to competitors

[Powdork]

For many keywords i follow, there are now 3 sponsored results followed by up to 7 full listings for google places, which also of course prominently feature links to the place page alongside the website's link. The place page is nothing more than google using your content, business info, and reputation to sell their advertising. It's really nothing more than an interstitial that is designed to divert traffic from you to one of your competitors.
Boo to you Google.

[tedster]

We've had a number of threads in recent months about this phenomenon - recently there was one which I can't locate at the moment that talked about the difference in traffic between #1 with no Adwords and #1 with three Adwords - and the difference was major.

There's no doubt that this is the situation - less free traffic from organic rankings.

[ErnestHemingway]

@Powdork

Wait till you see new Google layout which will pretty much kill the competition for 1st spot and get people on board to start spending money in Adwords and other advertising venues of Google.

It will be PAID STUFF that is where Google is heading with all these changes.

If they take the whole idea of "Ranking #1" for a term then they can invest their time and money into their advertising venue.

If they can secure the top 7 spots with ads and such then nobody will waste time trying to get ranked and everyone will jump on Adwords.

This is the FALL OF GOOGLE.

[HuskyPup]

and everyone will jump on Adwords.

I doubt that, I have customers in several different countries who are stopping AdWords altogether since they are seeing no returns for their investments. My widgets are expensive and a lot of them bespoke and with Google's attempts to second guess their searching and buying intentions seems to be leading to failure.

Interestingly several of them have commented how well their ebay shops do! I never thought that would happen considering my widget costs.

This is the FALL OF GOOGLE.

Whilst I do not see an imminent collapse I do feel that people are now looking elsewhere...I'm fairly sure the landscape will be very different in a couple of years time.