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When I want to access the "official" site without having to dig through the commercialized sites on the SERPS, I use Bing instead of G.   Much more pleased with the results when I'm not searching for "long tail" phrases.  Vanoogle (your idea of a toggle to get "pure" results) is a great  idea but G wants ALL the ad revenues it can bleed out of a page.

Egol - I am a layman when it comes to SEO.   I began noticing strange results around 3 weeks ago.  I was not observant enough to begin to define the issue and did not think to run your experiment.  I believe my results began to change (or changed more frequently) around the time of the March 23, algo update.  Hope this helps.

Seeing this too.   Ran my state and then "Kayak".   Similar SERPs to what you described (using IE).

I thought Google has been experimenting with geo-locating searches with increasing frequency.

Opened FireFox and searched for "Kayak".  Positions 1 & 2 were Kayak manufacturers.

Ran second search under my state.  Then immediately searched for "Kayak" and got new SERP results.  First two positions are now Kayak Tour Operations in my state.

One of my sites competes against a web developer who set up a network of approximately 150 sites.  Most (probably 80%) are in the same business.  The other 20% or so are geographically relevant.  Crap sites (no blogs or useful info) but they link to each other.  Developer also set up several directories with only his sites and the name of the city and the service in the domain names.   Works surprisingly well for the owners of his sites.

How long can this continue before it topples?  Worth reporting?

Yes ! (I apologize for the double posting).

When I read that part of BMR's post, I heard Claude Raines saying "I'm shocked that gambling is going on" and Peter Lorre saying "Your winnings sir".  B.S. indeed.

First, compliments to a very nice looking site.   I agree with Mike's comment that you need a shopping cart and a spot for visitors to add the items to the cart.  Even when I quickly drill down, there's not a readily noticable way to order.  Reviews would probably help too and the UGC will help in the SERPs.  Good Luck.

Jason : I've been wondering about the cannibalization issue too.   It seems possible.   Does anyone have any experience with the changes in SERPs on a strong site which started SEO for local well into the site's   existence ?  If so, I'd like to hear about the experience.

A lot depends upon your goals and the level of competition.  Do you want your best videos next to ads for competitors or your competitors' videos?

I plan to do some of both.  I would not want YouTube to outrank my site for the more unique content which I believe will convert better.   (Similar to Egol's reminders about not giving your best content to article hubs or even guest postings).   I'll accept the traffic from the YouTube videos and try to steer viewers to the complete video library available only on wwwmysitecom.

@ Brian - I wondered about the same thing.  Today's Moz SERPs report shows changes similar to what you described.  Bing results are very volatile for my site(s) so I can't be "sure".

Cypra correctly points out that faster sites make for a better user experience and Alan pointed out how inexpensive CDN can be.   I installed CDN on a site that already uses WP3TC.  Page load speeds cut in half but the bounce rate (which is very high) dropped by only 1 or 2%.

Has anyone who has multiple sites sampled their bounce rates before and after they installed CDN?

Wayne : I share your concern for allowing users to post comments without hastles and approve every comment.  There ought to be a widget that compares the commenter's IP Address and cross references it against a list of known Bots or spammers.   If you find something off-list, please PM me.

Thanks Martijn.   Info in manual is very helpful in visualizing a lot of issues.

Ryan - Thanks for asking this question.  Now I don't feel stupid for wondering how MR and MR (or even the Google equivalents) work.

As another comparator, the Library of Congress's MR & MT :

Page      MR 7.27

MT 8.39

Domain MR 7.61

MT 8.92

Perhaps Rand could address this in a White Board ?

Jest - It's not necessarily the volume of traffic but the quality of the traffic.  Most of these auto-completed (or "suggested") searches contain long tail terms which indicate the user is much more likely to convert to a customer.   My $ .02