Is physical product promotion on its way out thanks to the big G?

Heck no, physical products are way more popular than digital products. All of the people I know have never bought a digital products. Its just getting more and more difficult for SEO.

Google runs stuff taking the bulk of the search engine traffic. They only represent 6% of all traffic online the rest being websites. That's why if you get good with banner advertising you have a traffic stream that makes Google look tiny.

The gold is in both its just super targeted when focusing on keywords. Its like reading their minds.

Google provides the search to make money, so they got to put ads there. But don't you do it, or they will de-list you, or ban you or shome how try to destroy your business.

The yellow ads up top have been around for longer than I can remember. Usually there is only two of them, but sometimes more. Just depends on how many they can sell I guess. They go for a premium over the side ads.

banner advertising where? Can you explain this more please?

Stop complaining.

In reality, you need to be in the top three positions in the organic search to get significant traffic anyway. So just make sure you are one of them.

Second, the strip of products with images after the first couple of organic listings are from the Google shopping feed. It's free to be listed their provided you meet the requirements (you can't be an affiliate site). So rather than complain, why not get your products listed in there?

Third, why not learn how to be a ninja on Adwords? That way you can be in the prominent positions across the top or side of the page.

All these options are actually there to help you - the advertiser - so why are you complaining about them?

Add to that, Google doesn't really give a stuff about how easy it is for you to manipulate your way to the top of the organic listings and steal all the traffic. They care about the user experience.

Thank you and good night.

Matt

Selling physical products is always going to be a bigger market because internet marketers are just about the only ones who use digital products. That's why 95% of all digital products are aimed at marketers or wanna be marketers. How many non-IM folk do you know that read a lot of ebooks?

Kindle is helping to change that, but you are still talking a small percentage. But shoppers buy toys and clothes and other physical products online because they can get a better selection at a better price. They want the goods that they could buy at the store without going to the store. They want the "as seen on tv" goods without calling the 800 number. Physical goods are a great way to go.

Google is in the google-promotion business not the advertiser-promotion business. They charge what they want, they change their rules, they maximize their profits with little regard for how it affects advertisers. They don't make an intentional effort to screw their customers, but they don't feel sorry for you if it happens. All of the ads that you mentioned drowning out the searches are there because they make Google money. You can be highlighted in yellow at the top of the search ... if you have enough money. If not, then you are not supposed to be there and goog's doesn't feel bad about it. Learn some high-quality SEO and then be prepared to throw that all out and learn something else when they change their algorithm again. Do as James suggested and learn more about banner advertising and other traffic generation systems. Learn about keyword research and stop trying to be top dog with the keywords that the guys with unlimited funds are targeting. Be creative and come up with something that is a twist on a solid system. There are as many opportunities as there are ideas. Find yours and take action. Good luck.

Mr Money Banks thinks it is freakin annoying as hell. I want to punch the stupid internet if it was possible. Then when you are on a site, it goes to another site for 15 seconds before you can read whateve you want to read.

Google is trying to make it easier for the reader to find information yet I still think that if you market your sites as usual, you can do well regardless of the Google Algorithm change. People will stilll visit the top webistes.

This simple instance should be a lesson to all of us that we should diversify our rankings to organic, shopping, paid search placements and more.

See that wall over there? Yeah, that one. The one with the writing on it. It says to build your business on something more predictable and solid than free traffic from rankings at Google.

Build a list. Put out your own products. Work hard (like bricks-and-mortar businesses do) to win the loyalty of your customers so they buy from you over and over.

Nothing wrong with making some of your income from free Google traffic. Don't get me wrong. But increasingly it's becoming clear that a total reliance on it (or even a majority reliance on it) is foolish. Extremely risky.