Google Search isn’t the same anymore
http://mashable.com/2011/11/08/seo-best-practices/
The field of search engine optimization is changing. No longer do search results contain only web pages, but now there are local map listings, personalized results based on your interests, and recommendations from other people. There are reviews from review sites, and even previews of the page content, allowing users to know immediately which links are relevant. There are a multitude of resources that come with results, and businesses need to take advantage of these offerings to increase their page views and get new users. The simple “get a lot of links to your page” trick doesn’t work so well anymore, especially when local map listings are now one of the most viewed areas of the search results.
Web search used to be just based on number of links from one page to another, the authority and hub model. Hubs contained many links to authority pages, and the hub score was determined by how many authoritative pages it linked to. Authorities had their score determined by how many hubs linked to them. So, for example, the Rick Roll video is a great authority because so many pages link to it; its’ authority score is very high. Social sites like reddit have high hub scores because it links to so many other pages. PageRank is a similar way for determining what the best resources on the web are. But now, Google doesn’t even consider PageRank in local business searches. Ads have mostly stayed the same throughout the years. Ads follow a simple scheme: ads located at the top of the page have the highest clickthrough rate, regardless of ad content, and are sold for a premium. Ads near the bottom have the lowest clickthrough rate and are consequently sold for less. However, because ad blocker plugins are becoming more widespread, these ad results aren’t even seen, and all that is visible is what users want – results catered to their needs.