Are Google assets in SERP's improving the user experience

[Whitey]

I'm just curious, as to what members and guru's experience is, where Google assets have been dominantly employed against a minority of organic listings.

It used to be that position No1 drove a truckload of traffic on a G asset free page. But those days are largely gone as Google ramps up it's income.

Today i went through the user experience. On the page there were:

- 11 Paid listings
- The localised "7" pack [ out of a potential 1800 other options ]
- The maps - displays limited options
- Organic - 4 results ; 1 comparison site , 1 widget , 2 results from a well known brand for reviews.

Because the top results were so poor, it caused me to stay on Google and go much lower in the results.

To the power of 1, i couldn't help thinking Google makes more money from a poorer user experience as visitors ponder more. But deeply ranked sites may be attractive options to visitors over the assets when results are poorer and more frequently visited than low organic sites before.

Is there a positive out of the Google assets / organic squeeze for webmasters?

[tedster]

Sure, there's a positive for the webmaster. In addition to organic, our website can also have a presence in Maps, Products, Images, Videos, and also Adwords if we choose.

This multiple exposure on the same SERP can be very helpful to the business, even it some of it has a minimal cost and does make Google a bit of money. Marketing has an associated cost of some kind - that's a business reality.

I am also concerned about the lower quality of the organic SERPs these days, especially for longer search queries. I hope it's a transitional thing that will improve as Google's emphasis on machine learning and "something like AI" matures, but who knows where we're headed.