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Davinia,

I just finished an AdWords chat session regarding the same thing: ads with no competition appearing at the page bottom, below all organic SERPs. To my utter amazement, the AdWords rep claimed that Google researched and found that - get this - ads placed at the bottom will have a "higher" response due to the "flow" of viewers' browsing. So, my no-competition ads are appearing at the bottom. Not surprisingly, they've received zero clicks in over 150 impressions.

A nearly identical campaign for this client, run exactly one year ago, garnered a 4.4% CTR with the no-competition ads appearing ABOVE the organic SERPs. I tried to get the rep to agree with me that his description of this algo change was counter-intuitive and - based on my results so far - will yield abysmal clickthroughs and profit for Google. He was unmoved.

I also asked him why - if the results of bottom-scraping ads are so good - don't they charge advertisers MORE for the bottom position, rather than the #1 position? He didn't really respond to that.

I finally asked him to ask his supervisor to override the algo and let my ads run at the top of SERPs, as an experiment in performance/profitability. He said that's impossible - "out of our control."

If anyone has any insights regarding this unbelievably bizarre claim that bottom-scraping ads will perform better than those at the top of the page, I'd like to hear them.

I have 2 new clients whose Google Places pages were claimed & edited by other SEO companies. No info is available to me on the Google Accounts used to claim them.

Both Places listings need significant edits. Is there a way to re-claim these listings with new Google Accounts, in order to edit/optimize them? Or, do I have to create new Places listings and then ask Google to delete the old ones?

This situation must be occurring every day, it seems....

I'm glad to see this discussion, because I think we're experiencing a sea-change that began last year about this time with Google's big changes. I'm seeing that active linkbuilding without social-signal input is hurting some sites, whereas hands-off traditional linkbuilding (i.e., letting inbound links occur naturally rather than consciously creating them) with social-signal links/discussion is helping some sites.

For me, the big issue is whether SEOs can change the internal culture of clients, to get them to understand the growing-growing-growing importance of social media links (and brand discussion that doesn't necessarily include links). Clients who still don't "get" social media usually also don't "get" the need for a content-publishing plan, in which the best way to announce new content is through social media.

A related issue is the increasing importance of the authorship tag to Google rankings. Many organizations - large and small - still refuse to allow employees to identify as spokesperson-evangelists for the brand, yet it's clear Google rankings rewards those who publish as Google+ individuals. How will Google reconcile their ranking love for brands, with their new ranking love for Google+ authors?

UPDATE: just after submitting the above, I saw a new article on SERPs gains for content by Google+ authors:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2269354/Google-in-the-SERPs-Increasing-Authorship-Adoption-High-Data