When a company is struggling to find ways to increase revenue and meet expectations of its investors, employees and partners, a sudden shift to desperate tactics become obvious. Don’t mistake desperation for strategic execution - because they can sometimes get murky with media, PR, and spin doctors.
I’m referring to Yahoo here - if it’s not obvious already 
I was recently searching for consumer products and noticed, now more so than ever, that a major portion of their SERPs consists of a mix between Pay-per-Click ads, SSP, and property feeds. Granted, that’s what generate revenue for Yahoo! - but when it interferes with user experience - that’s where it crosses the line.
The screenshot below shows results for “mp3 players” - I cropped it to illustrate my point.
The first portion with light blue background are the regular PPC ads - that’s all cool. Business as usual for the search giant.
Scroll down a little and you’ll see listings that link to shopping.yahoo.com - this could have been something that is going on for some time now, and something that I’ve never agreed with from a user experience level. What Yahoo is saying here is that their results are the most relevant and others are being pushed down below the fold - is that fair practice?
Isn’t the purpose of search engines like Yahoo! to return unbiased, relevant and quality content to its users? Or should it go down the path of selling PPC and self-promotion?
Note: This occurs only when Yahoo! has products to push - so far I’ve noticed shopping.yahoo.com getting the boost.
Maybe it’s just me - but do you think that Yahoo should be covering the first half of the SERP with their own feeds?
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