It appears that Google has been tweaking its SERPS (search engine results) so much that it's quality of first page results has drastically deteriorated. This has been reported by several reputed webmasters worldwide. So, why Google does it? Obviously, to get more advertisers for their Adwords. Adwords is a means that Google advertises websites above natural results.
Who is to gain? As per the discussion at webmasterworld.com/msn_microsoft_search/4295942.htm, Bing is gaining rapidly.
The panel of webmasters say that the recent update called Panda is aimed at reshuffling the search results in such a manner to maximize the ad revenues of Google. There has been widespread discontent among the webmasters as well as the users over the quality of search results after recent updates.
Bing (http://www.bing.com) is a new search engine promoted by Microsoft vigorously. Bing has been improving its search results over the last couple of years, and it is now seen by many Internet users as an effective alternative to Google.
Checkout the digitalpoint thread: Google Panda = Disaster!
https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/google-panda-disaster.2152454/
Very interesting, and the update is uncharacteristic of an established search engine like Google!
Checkout this thread on digitalpoint forums:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2158515
Title: Search Market is Still Wide Open
Another thread on WW:
Wave Of Layoffs in Wake of Panda
webmasterworld.com/goog/4302481.htm