Google + Amazon = Love?

[1script]

So, I've experienced a precipitous loss of Google traffic last week, starting around Thursday. I think it's overall 30% down, maybe more - Monday has just started.

Went to check on some of the best keywords that used to bring traffic. The SERPs look like Google has just saw Amazon for the first time and fell in love:
SERP1 - 4 Amazon listings
SERP2 - 4 Amazon listings
SERP3 - 8 (WTF!) Amazon listings

Mind you, the rest is not mom-n-pop sites either, it's pretty much solid all the way up to SERP6 - Home Depot, Staples, Buy.com etc., all household names all the way up to page 6, with just a couple of pages by the actual manufacturer of the product plus a governmental certification agency.

It is unbelievable, almost every listing up to Page 6 is for businesses that are only interested in selling the product - no blogs, discussions or any other representation of the product - only pages that sell, sell, sell.

Even Wikipedia got pushed off to Page 7. I have never seen it so badly sales oriented. Are there Google business watchers here? Are they short on cash or need to pay a large bill/fine or something?

[tedster]

Are they short on cash or need to pay a large bill/fine or something?

I wouldn't assume this kind of organic SERP brings Google more revenue. To me it sounds like the new kind of "host crowding" that we're discussing in this thread: Eight pages from the same domain in one SERP [webmasterworld.com]

It is experimental, I hope ;)

[1script]

Thanks, tedster. A publicly traded US corporation is by law first and foremost about making money for the stockholders, that's why the mind always races to nefarious (well, OK, money making rather than plainly nefarious) scenarios first.

That thought aside though, it's not only host crowding, though I agree 8 pages from the same domain is ridiculous, but it's even more so "type of site" crowding - almost every listing out of any listing that may possibly be clicked at is a sales pitch.

It may only be shocking to me because I never needed to look at Viagra SERPs - they have probably always been this way. But this is a benign product used in construction and manufacturing industry and it's the first time I ever saw so many sales-oriented Google listings completely crowding out anything else there is to say about the product.

[Marshall]

One of the keyword searches I do returns 22 Amazon results in the first four pages with 17 consecutive listings starting on page 2, all of page three, and finishing on page four. and that does not include the Amazon's ads. And most of the other 18 results are irrelevant to e-commerce. Ebay is also showing numerous results in the first six pages. Mean time, the site I was testing for got bounced from page three to eleven. Go figure.

Marshall

[tedster]

A publicly traded US corporation is by law first and foremost about making money for the stockholders, that's why the mind always races to nefarious (well, OK, money making rather than plainly nefarious) scenarios first.

However, there's no direct dollar path from an organic search result to Google income. It's an indirect path:

Useful SERPs = More Users -- and that leads to more revenue

Otherwise the implication is that Google gets money directly from Amazon for organic listings or conversions from organic listings, and that is not the way things work.

[Martin Ice Web]

Tedster, it is great to see that your are still believe in onest Business.

[Staffa]

and that is not the way things work.

With all due respect tedster, unless you are privy to the inner workings between G and A, when it comes to making money companies will walk over dead bodies, literally and as a figure of speech.
There are enough real life examples over the past hundred years to prove it, including as recent as a couple of years ago.