Rand Fishkin   May 05 2012   Flag

Upvoted because the article is interesting and the premise is worth discussion. However, I suspect a lot of cherry-picking. There are a ton of SERPs that improved in quality and knowing Google's webspam and search quality teams and the engineers who work there, they would all literally quit and walk out the door (probably to get millions in funding or great jobs at other Valley firms) if Google corporate told them to make changes that made SERPs worse merely to increase ad revenue. This would also give upcoming competitors an opening, as (relative) quality is what keeps Google's market share strong. If they did this, it would be exceptionally short-term thinking and I just don't see that from Google's culture or any part of the executive or search quality team.