eBay stops buying Adwords -> is immediately demoted in organic search.

Well, well, well.... It doesn't get any more blatant than this.

First the news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7788804

The Hacker News discussion is full of Google fanboys(shills? naive fools? who knows), but some comments are definitely worth it. See this one:

bhouston 13 hours ago | link


It is a bit weird that "Harvard Business Review predicted that Amazon, Walgreens and other major internet retailers would soon follow eBay's lead and ditch AdWords. If you?re doing SEO, you get that prime SERP placement for free, right?"And then shortly there after eBay dropped significantly in Google's rankings. To be honest, the above statement from HBR is a major threat to Google's business.

Coincidence?

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(The bold letters are my edit.) Ummmm....this is pretty interesting, so eBay stops buying adwords and Panda 4.0 comes out destroying eBay's all too suspicious "organic" ranks?

Black Hats have probably brought up the eBay rankings suspicions about 100 times here, their organic results are absolute spam, we all knew it, but how come they lasted so long and only got banned after the adwords money flow dried? Strange, no? "Panda 4.0" what the f is that BS? It's the Adwords 4.0 update....the message seems to be pretty clear.

Now, who else is in the same boat as eBay? Amazon, Tripadvisor, several others. Pages and pages full of Amazon and Tripadvisor results.....how much are *these* guys spending on Adwords, does anyone know? Keep an eye on them. Soon as they halt the billion dollar ad spam via adwords, Panda 5.0 comes out.

Newbies finally see how Google *really* works? That's how google works. You got a billion to spend on ads? You won't have any trouble spamming the "organic" serps.

Very interesting OP.

google is god, google is life

that is how it works if you rule ..... pay them for the seeps and marry one of them to have a save adsense account ....and you are good .

great share op, also W9go.. I'll be reading up on that. Nice share. This is what Google is all about. It's only natural. Or should i say "organic"

Stupid question: But how do we know, aside from anecdotal evidence and marketers own confirmation bias, that Google really banned Ebay?

Did Ebay themselves issue any statements? Or did some random marketer search a half a dozen keywords and now everyone is just assuming they were penalized?

I'm just not clear how you track a site as large as Ebay...


edit: I just started my own search and want to note that the very first phrase I searched "buy used desktop computer" has an ebay listing at #4. That's not proof of anything HOWEVER, this is raising my suspicions that marketers are just making up more bs conspiracy theories.

Did Ebay themselves issue any statements? Or did some random marketer search a half a dozen keywords and now everyone is just assuming they were penalized?

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edit: I just started my own search and want to note that the very first phrase I searched "buy used desktop computer" has an ebay listing at #4. That's not proof of anything HOWEVER, this is raising my suspicions that marketers are just making up more bs conspiracy theories.

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so you want to say that your one keyword is better then dozens of keywords ?

it's a very very happy new for BHW if many big brands will stop paying adwords.
-=-

If any of the anti-trust laws had teeth, now would be a good time to bite.

prab1996 said:

so you want to say that your one keyword is better then dozens of keywords ?

it's a very very happy new for BHW if many big brands will stop paying adwords.
-=-

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But would they stop paying adwords after what happened to Ebay?

It certainly would be good news to small business owners too, if the playing field was actually leveled.

I read this one yesterday. It is justified IMO. I always like to think Google as a business, which it is. Please, please please don't take it as God.

g0g0l said:

I read this one yesterday. It is justified IMO. I always like to think Google as a business, which it is. Please, please please don't take it as God.

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It's justified for leveling the playing field or justified for deranking them due to not paying as much in Adwords?

Fack Ebay, If I owned Google I'd tell my managers to do the same thing.

Good news imho.

Very interesting! Seems like all this shit going on just keeps money flowing from everyone to google..

Assuming the Adwords policy rumours are true, I really can't see Google being stupid enough to take similar manipulative action against someone the size of Ebay.

Ebay have an army of lawyers and very deep pockets, so legal action would be a certainty, as would the resulting exposure of these alleged practices.

That exposure and any negative legal ruling would open the flood gates for everyone else.

And that would clearly be something Google would want to avoid at all costs.

Trepanated said:

Assuming the Adwords policy rumours are true, I really can't see Google being stupid enough to take similar manipulative action against someone the size of Ebay.

Ebay have an army of lawyers and very deep pockets, so legal action would be a certainty, as would the resulting exposure of these alleged practices.

That exposure and any negative legal ruling would open the flood gates for everyone else.

And that would clearly be something Google would want to avoid at all costs.

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Well, basically google has been doing nothing illegal, they closed 1 eye and let ebay spammed the organic traffic when they still used Adwords.

Now Ebay quit Adwords, "accidentally", both of Google's eyes are now openned lol.

Typlo said:

But would they stop paying adwords after what happened to Ebay?

It certainly would be good news to small business owners too, if the playing field was actually leveled.

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that is why google gave a kiss to ebay, now all others will be afraid of this thing.
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So if somebody create a bot to click on adwords ads like crazy and than few 1000s people start using this bot, than all google's animals will die.
To easy to be true. In this way billion dollars industries can be killed in a months. This is what I mean: If I spend 100s of 1000s dollars for adwords each month and get 100s of 1000s clicks without any conversation, than of course will stop paying. Than my rank will drop and my competitors will eat me (and of course 10's of 1000's adsense accounts will be banned with no reason). Don't forget that such bot can be running on background and can be installed on 1000s computers in 1 day trough some PPI, so this math sows that for $1000 or less, some giant can be killed in no time (or some local competitor for less than $10).
I am very twisted. Possibly the traffic level drop on ebay (if have such drop) is because duplicate content, because many people copy/paste the same add on many sites.

I would love to see the fight between ebay and google. Hope amazon and other giants give up on adwords too. That would deffinitely give google a lesson. But of course google wouldn't let that go and let small companies rank better on serps to punish the giants. And this means only 1 thing it will be a nice year=)

As long as Google keeps feeding the American Government peoples private information, Google can do what it wants, and there is nobody else powerful enough to stop them

Though the European Governments are starting to clamp down on the Big G, they are not united enough yet,