Google is showing more ads than it used to. There are more search queries than ever and more partner sites and partner ad impressions.
There's a marginal return on these extra impressions, they generate relatively fewer clicks. So you end up diluting the metrics.
It's not just more ads per page (although it is that in some cases) it's more page views too.
tl;dr: it's dilution due to marginal gains with the added traffic
If they follow their trends they should pay about 917 to 988M$ for distribution traffic. They will need to get at least a 25% increase in paid clicks over Q2 of last year which would be something like an increase in 5 - 6% in paid clicks over this just finished quarter. If they can't do that then they are going to miss their targets again next quarter. My guess (well what I would do if I were in their shoes) is that they would take it out of the members cut, basically reduce the payout to AdSense for Content and other member sites. Either way, interesting times ahead.
Many toolbars make all their money that way. Ask Partner Network, Conduit. Mozilla makes their money this way, in fact I bet a huge chunk of that cost you see there is the Mozilla deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Its kind of like watching the Pacific ocean erode the cliffs along Malibu, slowly but surely really pricey real estate is turning into tide pools.
Try a search like "Albert Einstein". No ads.
Are you doing research on hotels in London? Then you'll need to add some more keywords. Google Search is not setup specifically for London hotel researchers.
The VAST majority of people who type "london hotels" are looking to BUY a hotel room in London for the night.
And extremely expensive ads are the only way to help users???? The advertiser and Google don't have the user's interests in mind.
>>Then you'll need to add some more keywords. Google Search is not setup specifically for London hotel researchers. Of course not, because this was is more profitable to Google. They'll change the setup and display to increase their profits when necessary.
The ones that pay 5% of the booking price to kayak.
Face it, without commercial incentives you'd never get accurate pricing, making finding the cheapest hotel VERY hard. Finding a 5% cheaper hotel costs me the better part of the day, and that will generally be worth far more than the 5% of the price that I might save (ie. 15-20 bucks). Also, sites like kayak may not get volume pricing, but they do seem to get lower prices than I can get myself.