Ok heres my updated take on things since Google has begun showing Froogle links at the top of the SERPs … (it hasn’t really changed only evolved a little.)
It appears google has targeted “competitive terms” terms they have deemed as potential money makers through their research of adwords/adsense/froogle etc … They have placed this group of terms into a filter – if these “money” terms are searched google presents SERP’s that will contain froogle listings at the top.
However there seems to be a fundamental flaw in this process …
Google has placed an emphasis on ALL the “competitive terms” and they shouldnt have since ALL the terms do NOT necessarily mean buying a product E.G. “Froogle” … Some money terms may relate to a service e.g. guides / portals etc When these terms are searched no froogle filter is applied and the results are seemingly screwed up!
Whats this mean? Entire industries seemingly disappeared for these “money terms” as 70%-90% of the previous top 100 sites vanished!
Example of what I am talking about …
Search for Plasma Televisions
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=plasma+televisions
See the Froogle links? There are also 8-10 ad buys involved with this “competitive term(s) …
Search for Video Poker
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=video+poker
Well this term obviously doesn’t involve the purchase of a product so you wont see any Froogle links … You will however see 8-10 ad buys though so its considered a “competitive term” and has been filtered with the “FFF – Florida Froogle Filter”
Now you see how things are getting screwed up as non-product terms are getting lumped into the “froogle filter” But that’s where Google slaps in the face again as they expect you to enter into a bidding war since its considered a “competitive term” in the first place.
The days of the “free ride – free traffic” may be over ???? I am going to take a wait and see stance to see what Googles next move is before I make my next move. At this time this is the advice I would give to everyone because until we can nail down a proven solution we would just be spinning our wheels and potentially harming our positions in other engines …