> only AdWords sponsored content appears in Google searches anymore.
Wrong, AdWords sponsored results are promoted (just in a less obvious manner than before), but other websites also appear.
Wrong, AdWords sponsored results are promoted (just in a less obvious manner than before), but other websites also appear.
For product searches, there's also Google Shopping-- this started out (as Froogle and Google Product Search) indexing any shopping sites Google found, but, as of the rebranding to Google Shopping in 2012, exclusively shows paid listings.
Google Shopping also gets more prominent placing in web searches for products than the actual web results do.
Google things new, updated content on large sites is more relevant, but it's not. That content is recreated from older content on the web that doesn't have ads on it.
I'm sure it's just that google requires more and more work from webmasters to easily find searchable content, meta tags, modern HTML, etc, but the way new content is being produced now is under the guise of ultimately getting the content reader to buy a product.
The old internet was, "Omg, I can share my knowledge with people." Now it's, "Omg, I can make money with ads."
Google knows you want to click on that link. If your niche hobby had an ehow article how to do it, that'd be first for me I bet, unfortunately.